BBC has not yet renewed Noughts + Crosses for a second season. After a shaky production process, the first season of the series was released a few years after its first announcement.

**SPOILERS FOLLOW** The first season of Noughts + Crosses adapts the 2001 novel of the same name, with 2004’s Knife Edge being the next book in the series. Three more books then follow – Checkmate (2005), Double Cross (2008) and Crossfire (2019), with one final entry in the series – Endgame – in the works.

Does Callum die in the Noughts and Crosses book? Sadly Callum does die at the end of the book. After Sephy falls pregnant, Callum is arrested for his actions as a member of the LM and falsely accused of raping Sephy. Callum stands trial where he is found guilty and hanged.

Callum was involved in Sephy’s kidnapping, so far so similar, but sadly he was not able to gain redemption and run away with his true love. Instead, he was arrested for his actions and sentenced to death by hanging.

Turns out, Sephy is pregnant with Callum’s baby. Sephy and Callum were given 2 choices: Callum gets a reduced sentence but Sephy must get an abortion, or Sephy keeps her baby but Callum is hanged.

The novel itself is Young Adult, with Sephy and Callum contributing alternate chapters as they tell their entwined stories. There’s been much debate over what’s a suitable age to read the book with its challenging and upsetting content: the consensus has been around 12.

In the final chapters of Malorie Blackman’s novel Noughts & Crosses, protagonists and star-crossed lovers Callum and Sephy are left with an impossible decision after she becomes pregnant. So they choose Callum’s death over losing their child and he’s executed.

Callum

Five months after Jack died, his daughter Celine Labinjah, delivered the real letter to Sephy. In this letter, Callum declared his undying love for Sephy and their child.

After a few years have passed without contact, Callum kidnaps her, but they end up sleeping together and have a daughter, Callie Rose, who is raised by Sephy and Meggie after Callum is killed.

15-year-old Callum is a Nought, and his best friend, Sephy, as well as being a Cross, is also the daughter of one of the most influential politicians in the country. The story focuses on their relationship, which is frowned upon by society, and explores the discrimination they encounter at every turn.

Nathaniel “Nathan” Ealing

Callum had in fact written two letters. In the first he tells Sephy how much he loves her and that she must not tell the baby anything about his life as a terrorist. This letter he threw away and wrote the second one because he thought it might make it easier for Sephy to accept his death.

At the end of this section, The Picnic, what feelings towards Sephy does Callum try to bury? guilt. resentment.

However, in this quote, Callum seems reluctant to be seen with Sephy. The adjective ‘humiliating’ comes to show that he would feel ashamed to be in the same class as her. Which, furthermore, suggests that he thinks he’s of a higher level than she is.

Callum and Sephy represent star-crossed lovers, who fall in love despite divisions in society. They met when they were children, meaning that their liking for each other represents the fact that children are free from prejudice and discrimination.

‘Life is meaningless only if we allow it to be. Each of us has the power to give life meaning, to make out time and our bodies and our words into instruments of love and hope. ‘

Noughts + Crosses was partly inspired by Stephen Lawrence’s murder and how it was handled by a racist police force, but it’s worth remembering that just four years before he died, police classism inflicted misery on the families of Hillsborough victims.

Malorie Blackman OBE (born 8 February 1962) is a British writer who held the position of Children’s Laureate from 2013 to 2015. She primarily writes literature and television drama for children and young adults. She has used science fiction to explore social and ethical issues.

1952

Noughts & Crosses2001

The series is set in an alternate history where black “Cross” people rule over white “Noughts”….

Now it’s hard to imagine the YA landscape without the epic love story of Sephy and Callum, Malorie’s star-crossed lovers – her very own Romeo and Juliet. After Noughts and Crosses, Knife Edge, Checkmate, and Double Cross followed – and now, this August, we’ll get Crossfire.

Callum is a nought: pale-skinned and poor, he’s considered to be less than nothing – a blanker, there to serve Crosses – but he dreams of a better life. They’ve been friends since they were children, and they both know that’s as far as it can ever go.

A stage adaptation of Malorie Blackman’s best selling novel, the world of the Crosses and the noughts is reminiscent of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. It’s a modern-day tale of star-crossed lovers, race and violence.

I wanted to turn society as we know it on its head in my story, with new names for the major divisions in society, i.e. Noughts (the underclass) and Crosses (the majority, ruling society). I wanted to see this new world through the eyes of the main two characters, Callum (a nought) and Sephy (a Cross).

Malorie Blackman

February 8, 1962 (age 59 years)

Carnegie Medal

Clapham Town, London, United Kingdom