Loosely based upon the life of children's writer E. Nesbit[1] there are secrets slowly revealed that show that the families are much more creatively formed than first guessed.

While the central character of Olive is a writer of children's literature, supporting her large family with her writing, the title of the book refers to the children in the book: Tom, Julian, Philip, Elsie, Dorothy, Hedda, Griselda, Florence, Charles/Karl, Phyllis, and others, following each as they approach adulthood and the terrors of war.

And the second thing was, I was interested in the structure of E. Nesbit's family—how they all seemed to be Fabians and fairy-story writers.The Children's Book centres on the fictional writer Olive Wellwood and spans from 1895 until the end of the First World War.

[1] The book also features Rupert Brooke, Emma Goldman, Auguste Rodin, George Bernard Shaw, Virginia Woolf and Oscar Wilde, all as themselves.

[1] Byatt initially intended to title the book as The Hedgehog, the White Goose and the Mad March Hare.

[4] The Kent Wellwoods: The London Wellwoods: At the Victoria and Albert Museum: At Cambridge University: In London: At Purchase House in Dungeness: Neighbours in Kent: "Their guests were socialist, anarchists, Quakers, Fabians, artists, editors, freethinkers, and writers who lived, either all time, or at weekends and on holidays in converted cottages and old farmhouses, Arts and Crafts homes and workingmen's terraces, in the villages, woods and meadows around the Kentish Weald and the North and South Downs.