Britain’s
smartest kids

While other children were just starting their ABCs, three-year-old Mark Swallow was already reading Shakespeare and Charles Dickens. By the age of seven he was speaking fluent French and German and studying both Latin and Greek. Now, at the age of 12, Mark has just started a university degree in English literature.

Mark and other child geniuses will be the subject of a new documentary series which takes a look into the lives of these remarkable children and their families. In the programmes we will meet children like eight-year-old Daniel Manning, who wrote his first book when he was just five and who has just signed a £60,000 contract with a publishing house to write three novels. Then there is 12-year-old Samantha Price, who started piano lessons when she was three. Along with the piano, she now also plays the cello, clarinet and classical guitar. She has already played with three top European orchestras. And how about ten-year-old Jordan Welsh? She first picked up a paint brush before she could walk. She has already had an exhibition of her paintings in one of London’s top art galleries and has just won a major prize for one of her paintings.

Over the next six weeks we will see what it is that makes these children so special. We will find out how and when their parents knew they were different and about the changes it made to their family life. We will hear from the children about their hopes and plans for the future. There are also interviews with former child geniuses, some who have gone on to great things and others who decided they wanted to return to a more normal life.