Jill Paton Walsh
Jill Paton Walsh (born Gillian Bliss on
29 April 1937) is an English novelist and children's writer. She was educated at St Michael's Convent, North
Finchley and
St Anne's College, Oxford. In 1961, she married Antony Paton Walsh; they have one son and two daughters.
Walsh's novels for children span all ages and include;
Hengest's tale,
The Dolphin Crossing,
Fireweed,
Goldengrove,
The Emperor's Winding Sheet (
Whitbread Children's Prizewinner 1974),
Babylon,
A Parcel of Patterns,
Gaffer Samson's Luck (
Smarties Prizewinner 1985),
Birdy and the Ghosties,
Grace,
Thomas and the Tinners, and
The Green Book.
Her adult novels include
Lapsing about Catholic university students,
A School for Lovers, a reworking of the plot of
Mozart's
Cosi fan tutte, and
The Serpentine Cave based on a lifeboat disaster in St Ives.
Knowledge of Angels, a medieval philosophical novel, was shortlisted for the 1994
Booker Prize. She is the author of 3
detective stories featuring Imogen Quy;
The Wyndham Case,
A Piece of Justice, and
Debts of Dishonor. In 1998 she won acclaim for her seamless completion of
Dorothy L. Sayers unfinished novel
Thrones, Dominations, and she has since completed another
Lord Peter Wimsey novel,
A Presumption of Death.
In 1996, Walsh received the
CBE for services to literature and was elected a Fellow of the
Royal Society of Literature.
*
Biography on Jill Paton Walsh's website*
Full bibliography on her own website
