K. M. Peyton

Kathleen Wendy Herald Peyton, MBE (born 2 August 1929), who writes primarily as K. M. Peyton, is a British author of fiction for children and young adults.

She has written more than fifty novels including the much loved "Flambards" series of stories about the Russell family which spanned the period before and after the First World War, for which she won both the 1969 Carnegie Medal from the Library Association and the 1970 Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, judged by a panel of British children's writers. In 1979 the Flambards trilogy was adapted by Yorkshire Television as a 13-part TV series, Flambards, starring Christine McKenna as the heroine Christina Parsons.

Kathleen Herald was born in Birmingham, began writing when she was nine, and was first published when she was fifteen. She "never decided to become a writer ... [she] just was one." Growing up in London where she could not have a horse she was obsessed with them: all her early books are about girls who have ponies. After school, she went to Kingston Art School, then Manchester Art School. There she met another student, Mike Peyton, an ex-serviceman who had been a military artist and prisoner of war. He shared her love of walking in the Pennines. They married when she was twenty-one and went travelling around Europe.

When they returned to Britain, Peyton completed a teaching diploma. However, after the birth of her second daughter, she turned to writing full-time: mostly boys' adventure stories that she sold as serials to The Scout, magazine of The Scout Association, and later published in full. She began writing as 'K. M. Peyton' at this time; 'M' represented her husband Mike who helped create the plots.

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