Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, in 2018
Credit: Getty
Children are often the harshest critics. Anyone who has tried to make their toddler laugh or keep their pre-teen engaged knows how impatient kids are in the face of mediocrity.
Despite this, many still believe that they have what it takes to write children’s books. In one of the best episodes of the 2000 cult comedy Black Books, Dylan Moran and Bill Bailey create the “greatest children's book ever written” after hours of drinking called The Elephant and His Balloon. The book is so good they have to burn it.
The latest celebrity to attempt to cash-in on the kids market is Meghan Markle, whose new book The Bench is published by Penguin Random House in June. Through the eyes of a mother, the book follows different fathers and sons sitting on a bench. Modelled on Meghan, her former royal husband Harry Windsor and their son Archie, The Bench is based on a poem the Duchess wrote on Father’s Day. Meghan emphasised in a statement that “representation” was key to her and that she wanted to view “this special bond through an inclusive lens”.