Robert Atkinson Westall was an English author and teacher known for fiction aimed at children and young people.
16 Facts About Robert Westall
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Robert Westall has been called "the dean of British war novelists".
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Robert Westall was born 7 October 1929 in North Shields, Northumberland.
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Robert Westall grew up there on Tyneside during the Second World War, which he used as the setting for many of his novels.
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Robert Westall earned a Bachelor's degree in Fine Art at Durham University and a post-graduate degree in sculpture at the Slade School of Art in London in 1957.
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From 1953 until 1955, Robert Westall did national service in the British Army as a Lance Corporal in the Royal Corps of Signals.
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Robert Westall was inspired to be a writer by telling his son Christopher stories about his experiences in the Second World War.
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Robert Westall returned to its setting in Garmouth, a fictionalised Tynemouth, in other novels, including The Watch House and Fathom Five, which continues the Machine Gunners story.
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Robert Westall became the inspiration for The Devil on the Road, commended for the Carnegie Medal, and for a short story in The Haunting of Chas McGill.
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Robert Westall won a second Carnegie Medal for The Scarecrows.
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Robert Westall retired from teaching only in 1985 and tried dealing in antiques before focusing exclusively on writing.
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Robert Westall finally won the once-in-a-lifetime Guardian Children's Fiction Prize for The Kingdom by the Sea.
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From 1988 until his death Robert Westall attended a writers' circle in Lymm where he helped to assist and mentor new writers.
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Robert Westall died on 15 April 1993 in Warrington Hospital of respiratory failure from pneumonia.
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Robert Westall had his own cottage a few paces away, 107 Higher Lane, which he bought with book royalties and visited every day to do his writing.
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Robert Westall's papers, deposited between 2003 and 2010, are at Seven Stories, National Centre for Children's Books.