Leon Garfield: 1921-1996

Leon Garfield was a British writer of fiction, best known for his historical novels for children. He wrote more than thirty books, and scripted Shakespeare: the Animated Tales for television. An art student in his youth, Leon’s studies were interrupted by the outbreak of World War II. He joined the British Army Medical Corps, and met future wife Vivien Alcock (also a children’s author) while posted in Belgium. After the war he worked as a laboratory technician in a London hospital, writing in his spare time until the 1960s, when he became successful enough to write full time.

His first published book was the children's pirate novel Jack Holborn (1964), and his second, Devil-in-the-Fog (1966), won the first ever Guardian Award and was serialised for television. He is perhaps best known for Smith (1967), which was made into a series by Thames TV and has been in print continuously on both sides of the Atlantic since it was first published. Several of his other books have been televised, and Black Jack (1968) was made into a feature film by Ken Loach, which was joint winner of the International Jury Award at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival. A series of his popular novellas were collected as The Apprentices (1982), and throughout his career he was both a popular and critically well-regarded author. Leon continued writing until his death, and received considerable acclaim for finally completing and publishing Charles Dickens’s unfinished novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1982).

Leon won numerous awards throughout his career. His re-telling of Greek myths The God Beneath the Sea (1970) won the Carnegie Medal for children's literature, John Diamond won the Whitbread Award for best children's book in 1980, and Smith won the Phoenix Award for children’s literature in 1987. He was working on a four-hour dramatisation of The Odyssey for BBC Radio when he died in June 1996.