Stig of the Dump

Clive King was born in Richmond, Surrey, in 1924. When he was young his family moved to a village called Ash, near Sevenoaks in Kent, which is the setting for Stig of the Dump. He was educated at King's School, Rochester; Downing College, Cambridge and the School of Oriental and African Studies, London. During the war he served in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve and this, combined with his later work as a language teacher for the British Council, took him all over the world. Clive King attempted to learn fourteen languages including Tamil, Bengali, Gaelic and Anglo-Saxon. He said he was not incredibly successful with any of them, but many of his books deal with language difficulties of one sort or another.

Edward Ardizzone was born in 1900 and brought up in Suffolk. As a young boy he was fascinated by the vibrancy of the small Suffolk ports such as Ipswich, then frequented by the coastal steamers that travelled from port to port, which later became his inspiration for his Little Tim series. He was appointed official war artist in 1940 by Sir Kenneth Clark, director of the National Gallery, London, 1933-1945. Between 1929 and his death in 1979 Ardizzone illustrated a large number of books, including Graham Greene's The Little Train series, and wrote and illustrated many more including the well-loved Little Tim series, and with his cousin Christianna Brand, created Nurse Matilda, later familiar to many as Nanny McPhee.