Wind In The Willows

AuthorKenneth Grahame

Kenneth Grahame was born in Scotland in 1859 but grew up in the care of his Grandmother after his mother died. He joined the Bank of England as a clerk (unable to persue his ambition to go to university for financial reasons) but from an early point in his career he was publishing stories, initially in periodicals. In 1899 he married, and his wife Elspeth had a son, Alistair. Wind in the Willows grew out of the stories he told to - perhaps about - Alistair when he was a boy, and was published in 1908. Sadly, Alistair suffered from various health problems and committed suicide just before his 20th birthday. Grahame died in 1932 without publishing any further books, but the sucess of Wind in the Willows ensured he has been remembered ever since.

AuthorAlan Bennett

One of the most well known English authors of all time, Alan Bennett was born in Yorkshire in 1934. His love of theatre developed at Oxford, where he met Dudley Moore, Jonathan Miller and Peter Cooke, and the group of them became famous almost overnight after appearing at the Edinburgh festival. His first stage play was Forty Years On from 1968, and was followed by a huge body of work for stage, television and radio as well as screenplays, short stories and novellas. He is also well known as an actor, and has a popular following as a reader of stories, both his own and other writer's (including 'Winnie the Pooh').

Many of Bennett's characters are downtrodden and apparently uninteresting, but they are brought to life with great realism and also with compassion and humour. He has won multiple awards for all aspects of his work including his writing and acting and has declined both a CBE and a knighthood.

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