Jostein Gaarder is a Norwegian school teacher and author of books that examined the history of philosophy and religion for an audience of young readers. Gaarder studied the history of ideas, religion, and Nordic literature at the University of Oslo. After graduating in 1976, he worked as a secondary-school teacher of philosophy, religion, and literature in Oslo and Bergen. He began his literary... Read More
Joseph Delaney is a retired English teacher living in Lancashire. Delaney became an English teacher at the Blackpool Sixth Form College, where he helped start the Media and Film Studies Department. His first works were written under the pseudonym J. K. Haderack. Beginning with the publication of the first book of The Wardstone Chronicles in 2004, published under his real name, Delaney achieved... Read More
Joseph Henry Delaney is a British author of fantasy books and the all-time bestseller The Wardstone Chronicles. He first got the idea for the Wardstone Chronicles series when he moved to the village where he lives now and discovered there was a local boggart - ‘a man like me needs boggarts around’. He made a note in his notebook ‘a story about a man who hunts boggarts’ and years later when he h... Read More
Ian Fleming, in full Ian Lancaster Fleming, was a suspense-fiction novelist whose character James Bond, the stylish, high-living British secret service agent 007, who became one of the most successful and widely imitated heroes of 20th-century popular fiction. As well as the hugely successful Bond novels, Ian Fleming also wrote the novel Chitty Chitty Bang Bang: The Magical Car, on which the 19... Read More
Joanne Michèle Sylvie Harris is an English author especially known for her award-winning novel Chocolat. Her work is extremely diverse, covering aspects of magic realism, suspense, historical fiction, mythology and fantasy. Her books are now published in over 50 countries and have won a number of British and international awards. In 2013 she was awarded an MBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours L... Read More
Diane Setterfield is a British author. Before writing, Setterfield studied French Literature at The University of Bristol, earning a bachelor of arts in 1986 and a PhD in 1993. Setterfield taught at numerous schools as well as privately before leaving academia in the late 1990s. First published in 2006, The Thirteenth Tale was the author's first published book and became a New York Times No.1 b... Read More
James Brendan Patterson is an American author and philanthropist. Among his works are the Alex Cross, Michael Bennett, Women's Murder Club, Maximum Ride, Daniel X, NYPD Red, Witch and Wizard, and Private series, as well as many stand-alone thrillers, non-fiction and romance novels. In November 2015, Patterson received the Literarian Award from the National Book Foundation. Against Medical Advic... Read More
Robert Louis Stevenson was a Scottish novelist and travel writer. A celebrity in his lifetime, Stevenson attracted a more negative critical response for much of the 20th century, though his reputation has been largely restored. He is currently ranked as the 26th most translated author in the world. His first two books were travel accounts. Other non-fiction based on his personal experiences fol... Read More
Kenneth Grahame was a British writer, most famous for The Wind in the Willows, one of the classics of children's literature. Orphaned at an early age, Grahame went to live with his grandmother in England and attended St. Edward’s School, Oxford. Money was lacking for him to go to university. Hence, his family guided him into a career at the Bank of England, with which he stayed until ill health... Read More
Richard Dawkins, the world's most famous evolutionary biologist and one of science education's most passionate advocates, has spent his career elucidating the wonders of science for adult readers. But now, in a dramatic departure, he has teamed up with acclaimed artist Dave McKean and used his unrivalled explanatory powers to share the magic of science with readers of all ages. The Magic of Rea... Read More
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English writer of world-famous children's fiction, notably Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass. He published Phantasmagoria and Other Poems in 1869, The Hunting of the Snark in 1876 and Sylvie and Bruno in 1889. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was first published in 1865. With its... Read More
Lewis Carroll is a pseudonym of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, English logician, mathematician, photographer, and novelist, especially remembered for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel, Through the Looking-Glass. His poem The Hunting of the Snark is nonsense literature of the highest order. He died of pneumonia following influenza on 14 January 1898 at his sisters' home, "The Chestnuts"... Read More
Lewis Carroll was the pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, who brought us Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Carroll came from a family of high church Anglicans and developed a long relationship with Christ Church, Oxford, where he lived for most of his life as a scholar and teacher. Charles's father was an active and highly conservative cleric of the Church of England who later became the Arch... Read More
Richard Doddridge Blackmore, known as R. D. Blackmore, was one of the most famous English novelists of the second half of the nineteenth century. Educated at Blundell’s School, Tiverton, and at Exeter College, Oxford, Blackmore was called to the bar but withdrew because of ill health. He married in 1852 and was a schoolteacher from 1855 to 1857. Then, upon receiving a legacy, he bought a proper... Read More
Cressida Cowell is an English children's author, popularly known for the book series, How to Train Your Dragon, which has subsequently become an award-winning franchise as adapted for the screen by DreamWorks Animation. As of 2015, the series has sold more than seven million copies around the world. She was born on 15 April 1966 in London. She is the daughter of Michael Hare, 2nd Viscount Blake... Read More
Cressida Cowell is an English children's author, popularly known for the book series, How to Train Your Dragon. She grew up in London and on a small, uninhabited island off the west coast of Scotland. The island had no roads, houses or electricity. For the first four years, the family would be dropped off like castaways on the island by a local boatman and picked up again two weeks later. Imagi... Read More
Cressida Cowell is an English children's author. Cowell grew up in London and on a small, uninhabited island off the west coast of Scotland. The name of the island is a secret, but it was such a small island it wasn’t really big enough to have a name at all. There were no roads or shops or electricity on the island, just one house and a storm-blown wilderness of sea-birds and heather. Every yea... Read More
English children's author Cressida Cowell grew up mostly in Central London. She has a BA in English Literature from Oxford, a BA in Graphic Design from St Martin’s and an MA in Narrative Illustration from Brighton. Cressida wrote and illustrated her first picture book, Little Bo Peep’s Library Book for Hodder Children’s Books. This was followed by various picture books including Hiccup: The Vik... Read More
Cressida Cowell is the author and illustrator of the How To Train Your Dragon books, which became a DreamWorks film series in 2010. Her childhood was like a training course for eventually writing the brilliant How To Train Your Dragon series. Being packed off to an isolated Inner Hebridean Island each summer - with no modern amenities - meant that the young Cowell entertained herself with a qui... Read More
Cressida Cowell is an English children's author. In the evening, Cressida’s father read the children tales of the Vikings, who had invaded this island Archipelago over half a millennium before, of the quarrelsome Tribes who fought and tricked each other, and of legendary dragons who were supposed to live in the caves in the cliffs. This was how Cressida herself first began to write stories abou... Read More