Eva Ibbotson was born into a literary family in Vienna in 1925 and came to England as a small girl before the war. She took an honours degree in physiology at the University of London and went on to do postgraduate research at Cambridge, where she married a fellow scientist. Ibbotson wrote more than twenty books for children and young adults, many of which garnered nominations for awards for children's literature in the UK, including the Nestlé Smarties Book Prize and the Whitbread Prize. In her fiction for young adults, including The Secret Countess, Magic Flutes and A Company of Swans, Ibbotson was determined to prove that romantic novels can be funny, well-written and even a little erudite. Eva passed away at her home in Newcastle on 20 October 2010.
