Charlie Higson: 'I wanted to write a really scary book'

Comedian and author Charlie Higson gave his youngest son nightmares as part of his work to make his latest novel sufficiently frightening, he has revealed.

He told BBC Breakfast that early drafts of The Fallen had little effect on his 10-year-old, prompting him to make it "more and more intense and gory and brutal and upsetting".

He added that he thought it was important for children to "learn about fear and how to deal with it."