Dick King-Smith, one of Britain’s best-loved children’s writers, was born in 1922 in Bitton, a village between Bristol and Bath where his family ran a paper mill. He was educated at Marlborough College, served in the Grenadier Guards during the war and was badly wounded in Italy in 1944. He was by then married to Myrle England, whom he’d met when they were both 14; they were drawn together by their interest in creatures great and small. They were married for 57 years, till Myrle died in 2000. They had two daughters and a son and numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Dick lived all his long life close to his birthplace. He worked as a farmer for 20 years and then as a primary school teacher, before the first of his many children’s book – The Fox Busters – was published in 1978. In 1992, Dick was voted Children’s Author of the Year and in 1995 he won the Children’s Book Award for Harriet’s Hare.
He is also well-known for The Hedgehog, the Sophie books, The Queen’s Nose, which became a long-running TV series, and Harry’s Mad, also a TV series. His book The Water Horse was adapted into a successful movie in 2007.
In 1984, Dick’s story The Sheep-Pig won the Guardian Children’s Book Award. The much-loved film Babe, made a decade later, was based on this story of an appealing orphan piglet who learns to herd sheep.
Dick was awarded the OBE in 2010 and he died aged 88 in 2011.
