Celebrated children’s author, broadcaster and academic Michael Rosen set off before dawn on Monday morning from his home in north London to reach Stansted airport for a Ryanair flight to Italy.
The 79-year-old author of the children’s classic We’re Going on a Bear Hunt had been invited to the Bologna Children’s Book Fair. He was on the shortlist for the top global prize for authors of children’s books, the Hans Christian Andersen Award.
The event organisers had organised Mr Rosen’s flights and accommodation, and sent him the boarding pass for Ryanair flight FR194 to the Italian city.
He told The Independent: “I go through the check-in and I go through security and I go through all that, finally get to gate 91 and present my passport and ticket.
“The two very nice people working for Ryanair looked at my passport, which has my name, of course. It says Michael Wayne Rosen, British citizen, and it’s got my date of birth, and then it says the passport was issued on 4 March 2016.”
Under post-Brexit rules, the passports of UK travellers to the European Union must meet two conditions:
- Issued not more than 10 years before the date of entry to the EU.
- At least three months remaining on the intended day of departure from the EU.
Mr Rosen’s passport, like many others issued prior to September 2018, is valid for over 10 years. It easily met the second condition, but was 40 days too old for the first constraint.
He said: “You can tap me on the wrist, and say, ‘you fool Rosen – you should have read the regs’.
“Well, there’s a simple reason for that: because I was a guest, I didn’t see any travel documents. They just sent me a ticket which I then popped into my wallet on my phone.”
The organisers were unaware of the UK’s unusual policy of issuing passports for longer than 10 years, and the subsequent problems this can cause.
Mr Rosen posted on X (formerly Twitter) saying: “Ha! I’ve just been refused entry onto a plane from Stansted to Bologna because my passport issue date is March 2016. The expiry date is August 2026 but the rule is 10 years from issue date. Another Brexit benefit.” He has so far received more than 1,400 responses – not all of them sympathetic.
The abuse included comments saying: “You must be f***ing stupid”, “f***ing dimwitted”, “knob” and worse.
Dozens of respondents claimed, wrongly, that the rules had not changed after the UK government negotiated for British passport holders to become “third-country nationals”. One wrote, incorrectly: “WTF has Brexit got to do with it? Has always been the same.”
Mr Rosen said: “I mentioned the ‘B word’, Brexit, and that sent the trolls and the bots absolutely spare, so I’ve received vast amounts of abuse.”
But he added: “There is a happy ending to this story, because I came home and one of the first calls that came in was an Italian lady telling me that I had won the Hans Christian Andersen Award.
“I’m a little bit sad that I wasn’t at the announcement, to bask in the glory and all that, and for me to put an imaginary crown on my head. But I’ve had a happy day basking in that glory.”
“If I had paid for the ticket, my tickets coming home as well, and the hotel stay, I would have been a little bit more miffed, but, as you can see, I’m still smiling.”
Read more: When to renew your passport before visiting Europe
