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Award-winning writer Ann Thwaite talks about her craft.

About Ann

Ann Thwaite has written five major biographies. AA Milne: His Life was the Whitbread Biography of the Year, 1990. Edmund Gosse: A Literary Landscape (Duff Cooper Prize, 1985) was described by John Carey as magnificent - one of the finest literary biographies of our time'. Glimpses of the Wonderful, about the life of Edmund's father, Philip Henry Gosse, was picked out by D.J. Taylor in the Independent as one of the Ten Best Biographies' ever. Frances Hodgson Burnett was originally published (1974) as Waiting for the Party and reissued in 2007 with the sub-title Beyond the Secret Garden. Emily Tennyson, The Poet's Wife (1996), will bereissued by Faber Finds for the Tennyson bicentenary in 2009.

Born in London, Annspent the war years in New Zealand, returning to complete her education at Queen Elizabeth's, Barnet, and St Hilda's College, Oxford. She has lived in Tokyo, Benghazi and Nashville, Tennessee. She has lectured in many countries, but most of her life has been spent as a writer, and she is now settled in Norfolk with her husband, the poet Anthony Thwaite. She is an Oxford D.Litt., and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She is an Honorary Fellow of Roehampton University (National Centre for Research into Children's Literature) and has an honorary doctorate from the University of East Anglia.

For forty years, Ann Thwaite wrote children's books, including The Camelthorn Papers (1969), translated into Japanese and Greek, Tracks, a New Zealand story, and a much-loved picture bookGilbert and the Birthday Cake. Jan Mark included her story Feeding the Cats in the Oxford Book of Children's Stories (1993). She reviewed children's books, mainly in the Times Literary Supplement, for many years, and ran a library for local children in her home.

The Brilliant Career of Winnie-the-Pooh, a scrapbook off-shoot of her Milne biography, was published on both sides of the Atlantic in 1992. She edited (1968-1975) Allsorts , an annual collection which included new work for children by such writers as Michael Frayn, James Fenton, Penelope Lively and William Trevor. My Oxford (1977) contained memories of their time there by writers including John Mortimer, Antonia Fraser and Martin Amis. Her edition of Portraits from Life is a collection (1991) of Edmund Gosse's essays on his friends, including Henry James, Robert Louis Stevenson and Thomas Hardy.