ALAN GARNER was born in Congleton, Cheshire, in 1934, and grew up in Alderley Edge, where his father’s family have lived for more than three hundred years. He was educated at Manchester Grammar School and at Magdalen College, Oxford, after which he began writing his first novel, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, at the age of twenty-two.
His books include Elidor, The Owl Service (winner of the Guardian Award and the Carnegie Medal), Red Shift, The Stone Book Quartet (winner of the Phoenix Award of America in 1996) and, most recently, Strandloper.