Hester Burton (6 December 1913 – 17 September 2000) was an English writer, mainly of historical fiction for children and young adults. She received the Carnegie Medal for her 1963 novel Time of Trial, which like many of her books was illustrated by Victor Ambrus. Early life She was born Hester Wood-Hill on 6 December 1913, in Beccles, Suffolk, where her father was elected town Mayor three times. From 1925 to 1936, she attended Headington School, Oxford and then St Anne's College, Oxford, where she received an honours degree in English. In 1937, she married Reginald W. B. Burton, a Classics don at Oriel College. They had three daughters. Non-fiction In 1949, Burton published a biography of Barbara Bodichon, the 19th-century feminist, artist and educationalist. She worked for Oxford University Press from 1956 to 1964, contributing two volumes to the Oxford Sheldonian English Series for secondary schoolchildren: Coleridge and the Wordsworths, 1953, and Tennyson in 1954. She worked as an assistant editor for the revised Oxford Junior Encyclopaedia, and edited two 1959 anthologies: A Book of Modern Stories and Her First Ball. In addition, Burton edited works by friends and colleagues, including Thomas Hardy: Distracted Preacher? Hardy's Religious Biography and its Influence on his Novels by Timothy R. Hands and Mike Esbester. Fiction Burton's first children's novel was The Great Gale, published 1960 and inspired by the devastation of the North Sea flood of 1953 on her home county of Suffolk. Her subject matter often reflects a radical approach popularised by Geoffrey Trease. It includes the slave trade in To Ravensrigg and the Captain Swing riots of the 1830s in No Beat of Drum and Otmoor for Ever. She sometimes covered similar themes for different age groups; Beyond the Weir Bridge is for teens, while the same issues and events appear for six to nine-year-olds in Through the Fire. Several are set in Suffolk, many having a maritime or naval setting. Rather than balancing divergent views, Burton presented her stories from the angles of individuals or groups, which she saw as more authentic. In a 1973 interview, she explained, "I am not all-wise or all-knowing... but neither were the people actually taking part.... It is a wise precaution for a writer of historical fiction to limit this range of vision... [and] also much better art." Many of her books, such as No Beat of Drum and A Time of Trial,