A Child Called Freedom: An African Journey

Returning to Africa, Carol visited the Hector Pieterson Museum which commemorates the Soweto Uprising of June 16th 1976 when thousands of schoolchildren took to the streets in South Africa. Hundreds were killed in what one commentator described as 'Apartheid's largest single massacre of its black people.' Determined to re-write the story of that event for a new readership, A Child Called Freedom commemorated the 30th anniversary of the Uprising. It is the story, too, of Carol's relationship with two brothers living in a squatter camp. Staying in Soweto to interview people, ex-pupils told her they drew inspiration from Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist, which is why, at the curator's request, a signed copy of her book is housed in the Dickens Collection at his former home in London's Doughty Street.

Book Author

Carol-lee Born in Carmarthenshire, South Wales, Carol spent much of her teenage life in Tanzania before beginning a career in journalism on the South Wales Echo in Cardiff.She has been a reporter for the BBC, a columnist on the Daily Mail and a contributor to The Observer, The Guardian, The Independent, The Times, The Sunday Times and The Evening Standard. She has taken part in numerous radio and tv programmes.In a chequered childhood, often not going to school at all, and changing, she thinks, around 18 times, journalism was her education.Leaving full-time journalism in order to write books and to t...
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Book Reviews

  • Western Mail
    "If ever there was a book for our time, Carol Lee's A Child Called Freedom is it. Part memoir, part historic account, it weaves together voices of people speaking across the years."
  • Glasgow Herald
    "Carol Lee has broken the rules of political correctness (thank God).... If you read nothing else in this fine and well-written book turn to Chapter 17... politicians would prefer you didn't."
  • The Times
    "Thirty years on, the word 'Soweto' still tolls like a mourning bell. Lee sees through her own eyes the present South Africa where education is still difficult and democracy a weasel word."
  • The Zimbabwean
    "Carol Lee has painted us a picture of what happened that fateful winter morning... It is a picture that deserves to hang on walls. It deserves our attention."