Alison Prince

Alison Prince (26 March 1931 – 12 October 2019) was a British children's writer, screenwriter and biographer, who settled on the Isle of Arran in Scotland. Her novels for young people won several awards. She was the scriptwriter of the much repeated children's television series Trumpton.

Background Prince was born on 26 March 1931 in Beckenham, Kent She grew up in South London and attended a girls' grammar school

From television to books Prince later moved into writing for children's television, gaining notice with her scripts for the stop motion animated puppet series Trumpton (1967) for young children produced by Gordon Murray. Prince also wrote the lyrics for the songs performed by Brian Cant. "I didn’t have a television, but I had three kids to feed, so I said yes," she recalled in 2006.

Her first book was Joe and a Horse and other stories about Joe from 'Watch with Mother, with Joan Hickson, a 1968 spin-off from the BBC pre-school program Watch with Mother. Her thriller Oranges and Murder was the Scottish Arts Council Children's Book of the Year in 2002. Translations of her books have been published in several languages, including Danish, German, Japanese and Welsh.

Mainly for adults, Prince wrote well-received biographies of Kenneth Grahame (1994, reissued 2009) and Hans Christian Andersen (1998), a collection of essays on formative thinking, two booklets of poetry, and two volumes of pieces that had originally appeared in a local Arran newspaper.

In 2005, Prince received an honorary doctorate of letters from the University of Leicester for services to children's books.

Forbidden Soldier, a children's book about the second phase of the English Civil War, appeared in 2014, as did The Lost King: Richard III and the Princes in the Tower, a biography of Richard III.

Death Alison Prince died on 12 October 2019, aged 88, having been ill for a number of years, which involved undergoing major heart surgery.