Charley Boorman is an actor, adventurer and a writer. He is also dyslexic. He says it was his father, the film director John Boorman, who spotted the signs – not his teachers, who wrote him off.

“At the time when I was going to school in Ireland people didn’t really have a clue about what it was, so I had to spend a lot of my time trying to explain to teachers what dyslexia meant.”

Frustrated in class, he played the clown he says. “I found I was being pushed to one side and I was being ear-marked as being thick, which is a very damaging thing to be told as a young kid,” he says, laughing.

“(They said) you’re thick and you’ll not amount to much.”

Read full article >

What is Dyslexia?

• Dyslexia is a common reading and language disorder
• Characteristic features of dyslexia are difficulties in phonological awareness, verbal memory and verbal processing speed
• Difficulties may be seen in aspects of language, motor co-ordination, mental calculation, concentration and personal organisation, but these are not, by themselves, markers of dyslexia
• Between 4% and 5% of the UK population are dyslexic
• There are about 375,000 pupils in the UK with dyslexia and a total of some 2m people who are severely affected