Captain Tom ‘would have loved’ new book One Hundred Reasons To Hope

Captain Sir Tom Moore was in awe of people who were “inspired to do incredible things” amid the Covid-19 pandemic and spoke with his family about celebrating them in a book, which has now been written, his daughter said.

The children’s illustrated non-fiction book One Hundred Reasons To Hope tells 100 stories from the last 18 months, from the dancing binmen of Wolverhampton to students volunteering on the front line.

Hannah Ingram-Moore said her father, who died in February aged 100, would have “loved” the book.

She said they had spoken about the idea on a family holiday to Barbados in December.

“When we were on that amazing trip to Barbados I sat with him and went through the proofing of Life Lessons, which was that last book that was directly his,” she said.“As we were sitting there talking as a family he never failed to be just truly in awe of those who were inspired by what he felt was just one simple small thing.

“They looked at him and were inspired to do incredible things, and we felt we needed to capture that so it didn’t get lost.”

Ms Ingram-Moore, who wrote the book’s foreword and did the reading for the audiobook, said she hoped the book would show that “anybody can make a difference”.

She said the stories that brought her father the “greatest joy” were of children “going above and beyond the difficulties that they had and doing spectacular things”.

“He loved it and he would have loved reading this book,” she said.

“To him they were all heroes, all of them.

“He always said ‘all I did was one small step, everyone else is doing all these incredible things’.”

The book goes on sale on Thursday, with a £1 donation to the Captain Tom Foundation for all hardback print sales in the UK and Ireland.