Biographical Sketch

Colin Thompson was born in Ealing, London, on Oct 18th 1942. He grew up in London, where, apart from a spell at a boarding school in Yorkshire, he was educated through to art school & film school. He has worked variously as a silk screen printer, a Harris Tweed weaver, a potter, a stage manager and a documentary director. He was in his late forties before he turned to writing and illustrating books for children, with his first book--Ethel the Chicken--being published by Hodder in 1991.

Since then he has concentrated on large, highly-detailed picture books directed at an older, more sophisticated reader than the traditional picture book market.

He moved to Australia in the mid-nineties, and is now an Australian citizen.

Colin Thompson has been one of the few children's authors to pioneer use of the Internet. Further biographical background can be found on his own comprehensive website which, during 1999, he used to publish, on a dialy basis, an ongoing novel for teenagers and adults called 'Future Eden'.