Leon Garfield FRSL (14 July 1921 – 2 June 1996) was a British writer of fiction. He is best known for children's historical novels, though he also wrote for adults. He wrote more than thirty books and scripted Shakespeare: The Animated Tales for television. Life Garfield attended Brighton Grammar School (1932–1938) and went on to study art at Regent Street Polytechnic, but his studies were interrupted first by lack of funds for fees, then by the outbreak of World War II. He married Lena Leah Davies in April, 1941, at Golders Green Synagogue but they separated after only a few months. For his service in the war he joined the Royal Army Medical Corps. While posted in Belgium he met Vivien Alcock, then an ambulance driver, who became his second wife (in 1948) and a well-known children's author. She also greatly influenced Garfield's writing, giving him suggestions, including the original idea for Smith. After the war Garfield worked as a biochemical laboratory technician at the Whittington Hospital in Islington, writing in his spare time until the 1960s, when he was successful enough to write full-time. In 1964 the Garfields adopted a baby girl whom they called Jane after Jane Austen, a favourite writer of both parents. Garfield wrote his first book, the pirate novel Jack Holborn, for adult readers, but an editor at Constable & Co. saw its potential as a children's novel and persuaded Garfield to adapt it for younger readers. In that form it was published by Constable in 1964. His second book, Devil-in-the-Fog (1966), won the first annual Guardian Prize and was serialised for television, as were several of his later works (below). Devil was the first of several historical adventure novels, typically set late in the eighteenth century and featuring a character of humble origins (in this case a boy from a family of travelling actors) pushed into the midst of a threatening intrigue. Another is Smith (1967), in which the eponymous hero, a young pickpocket, is accepted into a wealthy household; it won the Phoenix Award in 1987. Yet another is Black Jack (1968), in which a young apprentice is forced by accident and his conscience to accompany a murderous criminal. In 1970 Garfield's work started to move in new directions with The God Beneath the Sea, a re-telling of numerous Greek myths in one narrative, co-authored with Edward Blishen and illustrated by Charles Keeping.