Clive King

David Clive King was born in Richmond, Surrey in 1924. In 1926 he moved with his parents to Oliver's Farm, Ash, Kent, on the North Downs, alongside which was an abandoned chalk-pit. His early education was at a private infant school where one of the teachers, Miss Brodie, claimed to have taught Christopher Robin Milne, and introduced Clive to stories about Stone Age people. Thereafter he went to King's School, Rochester, Downing College, Cambridge, and the School of Oriental and African Studies, London.

From 1943 to 1947 he served in the Royal Navy, travelling widely and civilian postings as an officer of the British Council took him to Amsterdam, Belfast, Aleppo, Damascus, Beirut, Dhaka and Madras.

Several of these exotic places provided material for his nineteen children's stories, but his best-known book Stig Of The Dump was written during an educational job at Rye, East Sussex. The BBC broadcast a new television adaptation in early 2002.

Clive King has three children, seven grandchildren and a great-grandchild.