Biography

My Life
Ten Things You Didn't Know About me

My Life

I was born in a “dull little town” which grew up around the railways. My father worked for the railways, as did all the males of the family on both sides. Just before I was three, we moved to London, where my father had a job in an office under the ground at Waterloo (which could only be reached by a maze of subterranean passages). At Primary School I wrote plays which my friends performed

This is me aged six on a typical British summer holiday.

When I passed the 11+, I went on to a scholarship to an independent girls’ school in Dulwich — which was a big culture shock.

In 1964 I went up to Cambridge (Newnham College) to read English Literature and in 1968-70 I took a diploma in linguistics at University College London. In 1970 I started writing my first book, which was published in 1975 as White Magic. Since then, I have written about eighty books for children, including the picture book Amazing Grace , the Stravaganza series of novels and the anti-war anthology Lines in the Sand. The first of the Stravaganza novels, City of Masks, was my longest book since the first (which was incidentally set in Italy). But City of Flowers is longer still.

I got married in 1972 to Stephen Barber, who is half-Indian, and we have three daughters. The eldest one, Rhiannon Lassiter, is a published writer of Science Fiction/Fantasy. The second is an actor (Rebecca) and the third (Jessica) is training to be an architect.

We moved from London to a big old converted barn in West Oxfordshire in early 2001 and most of City of Masks was written in my lovely new study there, which is green and white, with French windows onto the garden, a silver mask on the notice board and a vase of peacock feathers in the fireplace.

The sequel, City of Stars, was published in September 2003. I had a terracotta tile of a flying horse, bought in Siena to inspire me while I was writing it, and a shield featuring the ram of the Valdimontone district of that city, where the Palio race is held twice each summer. The third book in the series, City of Flowers, was started in Florence in October 2003 (see my Florentine Journal on this site) and published in March 2005.

Meantime, I attend Italian literature classes each week in Oxford, produce four issues of the children’s book review magazine Armadillo every year, read voraciously. I lost my lovely little red Burmese cat, Kichri, in February 2005 but we are getting three kittens in July. Watch out for their pictures on this website!

photo: Jess Barber

This is what I look like today.

Ten Things You Didn't Know About Me

• I had my appendix taken out by Enid Blyton's husband! (fortunately he was a surgeon)
• My first book was read in manuscript by Richard Adams, author of Watership Down and he suggested sending it to his publishers, Rex Collings, after a dozen others had turned it down. They took it.
• I didn't change my surname when I got married.
• Amazing Grace and Boundless Grace (which is what Grace and Family is called in the US) were both turned into musical plays and performed in Minneapolis in 1995 and 1998.
• When I was a little girl, I wanted to be a garage mechanic.
• I didn't learn to drive until I was over fifty.
• My husband is half-Indian. His mother was a Parsee, born in Bangalore.
• One of my great-grandfathers was German, another Irish.
• I am learning Italian and would love to have a house in Italy.
• I never wear or own anything blue.