About Leon Garfield
Leon Garfield FRSL (14 July 1921 – 2 June 1996) was a British author. He is best known for children's historical novels, though he also wrote for adults. He wrote more than thirty books and scripted Shakespeare: The Animated Tales for television. His retellings of Shakespeare for young readers were published as Shakespeare Stories. Garfield won the inaugural Guardian Prize for Devil-in-the-Fog, the Carnegie Medal for The God Beneath the Sea, a retelling of Greek mythology cowritten with Edward Blishen and the Whitbread Award for John Diamond. He wrote an ending for The Mystery of Edwin Drood, left unfinished at the death of Charles Dickens. Garfield attended Brighton Grammar School (1932–1938) and went on to study art at Regent Street Polytechnic, but his studies were interrupted first by lack of funds for fees, then by the outbreak of World War II. His second book, Devil-in-the-Fog (1966), won the first annual Guardian Prize and was serialised for television, as were several of his later works (below).
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