Frederick Grice

Frederick Grice (21 June 1910 – 8 February 1983) was a British author who specialised in children's literature. Grice wrote 20 books, the best known of which is The Bonny Pit Laddie.

Early life and education Born in Brandon and educated in Durham at Johnston School, Grice read English at King's College, London (1928–1931), where he graduated with a first-class degree.

He subsequently returned to Durham to complete his teacher training at the local university (1931–1932). He was employed as an assistant master at A.J. Dawson School in County Durham from 1934 to 1940. During the Second World War he served in the Royal Air Force as a Flight Lieutenant in a small mobile radar unit (Unit 606) that was attached to the Eighth Army in North Africa and operated out of a single lorry.

Career Set in the northern England of the 1920s, The Bonny Pit Laddie is the story of an aspirational teenage boy in a County Durham mining village experiencing a pit strike. Standing out for its realism and "unsentimental" style, it was runner-up for the 1961 Carnegie Medal. His best known book, The Bonny Pit Laddie, was praised for being a story of the "ordinary working man" and featuring a "raw sense of injustice" reminiscent of Geoffrey Trease. He also received criticism for his perceived lack of interest in depicting female characters, especially in Aidan and the Strollers, which is a theatrical story set among a troupe of travelling actors and where the strong presence of an actress character might be expected.

He died on 8 February 1983.

Selected publications Fiction

Non-fiction