Peter Dickinson

Peter Malcolm de Brissac Dickinson OBE FRSL (16 December 1927 – 16 December 2015) was an English author and poet, best known for children's books and detective stories.

Dickinson won the annual Carnegie Medal from the Library Association for both Tulku (1979) and City of Gold (1980), each being recognised as the year's outstanding children's book by a British subject. His first two books were published in 1968 and were very well received, one mystery for adults and one science fiction for children. He completed sequels to both debut novels and left Punch to be a full-time author next year. He continued to write poetry for entertainment and occasionally on commission.

Dickinson married Mary Rose Barnard in 1953; the couple had two daughters and two sons including the children's editor and publisher Philippa Dickinson and the writer John Dickinson.

Dickinson was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1999 and appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2009 Birthday Honours. He was also chairman of the Society of Authors.

For years he listed manual labour as one pastime; at 85 he listed only bridge and gardening.

Writer

Dickinson published almost fifty books, which fall into three general categories: crime fiction for adults (including the James Pibble series), speculative and supernatural fiction for older children, and simpler children's books. One of his few other books was the collection Chance, Luck and Destiny (1975), which he calls "prose and verse, fact and fiction, on the themes of the title". It was heavily adapted in 1975 as a BBC TV series, The Changes. The trilogy was written in reverse order: The Devil's Children is actually the first book in terms of the trilogy's chronology, Heartsease the second, and The Weathermonger the third.

Dickinson's first two mysteries both won the Crime Writers' Association's Gold Dagger, Skin Deep in 1968 and A Pride of Heroes in 1969. He was at least as successful with his children's books. He won the 1977 Guardian Children's Fiction Prize for The Blue Hawk, an award judged by British children's writers, which no author may win twice.

City of Gold and other stories from the Old Testament (Gollancz, 1980), illustrated by Michael Foreman, was a "radical" retelling of 33 stories, according to the retrospective online Carnegie Medal citation. "It is set in a time before the Bible was written down, when its stories where handed from generation to generation by the spoken word."

Motion pictures

In 1982, Rankin/Bass Productions released The Flight of Dragons, a made-for-TV animated film, aspects of which were based on Dickinson's book. The character design in the film bears a resemblance to the illustrations in the book. However, the novel The Dragon and the George by Gordon R. Dickson was the inspiration for the film's plot. One of the main characters is Peter Dickinson, the book's author himself struggling to complete his text.

Works

Novels for children and young adults Changes trilogy The Weathermonger (1968) Heartsease (1969) The Devil's Children (1970), illus. Robert Hales

Other novels Emma Tupper's Diary (1970) Mandog (1972) The Dancing Bear (1972), illus. David Smee The Gift (1973) The Blue Hawk (1976), illus. David Smee —winner of the 1977 Guardian Prize The Flight of Dragons (1979), illus. Wayne Anderson —"speculative natural history" adapted by Rankin and Bass jointly with another work as the animated film The Flight of Dragons (1982) City of Gold and other stories from the Old Testament (1980), retold by Dickinson, illus. Michael Foreman —winner of the 1980 Carnegie Medal