About the Author

Jill Paton Walsh (1937-2020) was an award-winning author of many books for children, young adults, and adults including The Green Book, A Parcel of Patterns, the Booker Prize shortlisted Knowledge of Angels, and the Whitbread Prize winner The Emperor's Winding Sheet. She completed Dorothy L. Sayers's unfinished Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane mystery manuscript, the international bestseller Thrones, Dominations, and continued Sayers's series with A Presumption of Death, The Attenbury Emeralds, and The Late Scholar.

She held numerous posts connected to literature, including an Arts Council Creative Writing Fellowship, acting as a Whitbread Prize judge, and serving on the committee of the Society of Authors. She contributed articles and reviews to many journals. In 1996 Walsh was awarded a CBE for services to literature and was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Reviews

A pocket masterpiece
*Guardian*

A masterly tale
*Lucy Mangan*

If ever there was a book to make us thankful to live in modern times, have scientific cures and the NHS, this is it. Jill Paton Walsh catches the voices of long ago, in the unbroken narrative of one likeable girl: 'author' of the story. Punctuated by exquisite glimpses of Nature, beautiful and raw, and of joyous first love, the account lays bare the horror of a remorseless epidemic. Even knowing the historical facts, we go on hoping, crossing our fingers, holding our breath. The archaic language, jolting at first, feels familiar by the end and adds to the authenticity of the heroine's account. The message to the reader - if indeed there is one - feels important: be grateful for small mercies...and glad to be alive
*Geraldine McCaughrean*

A beautifully written, meaningful story
*Publishers Weekly*

[Jill Paton Walsh] had an unpatronising literary style and was ambitious about what children would enjoy
*Guardian*