Biographical Sketch

Kevin Crossley-Holland was born in Mursley, North Buckinghamshire, on February 7th, 1941, and grew up in Whiteleaf, a village in the Chiltern Hills, once home to Rumer Godden. He was educated at Bryanston School and then at St Edmund Hall, Oxford (1959-62) where, after failing his first exam, he eventually developed his passion for Anglo-Saxon literature. After university he worked for Macmillan and was then Gregory Fellow in Poetry at the University of Leeds from 1969 to 1972. He worked for Victor Gollancz form 1972-77, alongside lecturing in Anglo-Saxon for the Tufts Univiersity of London programme. He has also taught for extended periods in America.

He has published six volumes of adult poetry, and has worked as a librettist, collaborating with composers such as Sir Arthur Bliss and Nicola LeFanu. In the world of children's books he is best known for his numerous retellings and anthologies, and in particular for his version of Beowulf. An original work for young readers, Storm, published in the Banana series, won the Carnegie Medal in 1985. The Seeing Stone, published summer 2000, is his only other work of original fiction.