“I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of anything than of a book! When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.” Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice.

Drawing on a nationally representative longitudinal study of more than 17,000 people born in Britain in 1970 (the 1970 British Cohort Study), Professor Alice Sullivan explored the positive influence of reading for pleasure on learning during the teenage years and into mid-life.

Professor Alice Sullivan is Director of the 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70) at the UCL Institute of Education‘s (IOE) Centre for Longitudinal Studies (CLS). Alice leads the team responsible for developing the content, design and analysis of the survey. She has published on areas including: social class and gender differences in educational attainment, single-sex and co-educational schooling; private and grammar schools, cultural capital, reading for pleasure, and access to elite higher education.