Judith Kerr was born on 14 June 1923 in
Berlin but escaped from Hitler’s Germany with her parents and brother
in 1933 when she was nine years old.
Her father was a drama critic and
a distinguished writer whose books were burned by the Nazis. The family
passed through Switzerland and France before arriving finally in
England in 1936. Judith went to eleven different schools, worked in the
Red Cross during the war, and won a scholarship to the Central School
of Arts and Crafts in 1945. Since then she has worked as an artist, a
BBC television scriptwriter and, for the past thirty years, as author
and illustrator of children’s books.
Her three autobiographical novels are based on her early wandering
years (which against all the odds she greatly enjoyed), her adolescence
in London during the war, and finally on a brief return to Berlin as a
young married woman. The stories have been internationally acclaimed
and, to the author’s considerable satisfaction, have done particularly
well in Germany where they are sometimes used as an easy introduction
to a difficult period of Germany history.
Judith is married to scriptwriter Tom Kneale – they have two
children and Mog, their very own forgetful cat. They live in Barnes,
London. Their son was awarded the Somerset Maughan prize for his first
novel.