Judith Kerr

‘Judith Kerr ‘ was born on 14 June 1923 in Berlin but escaped from Hitler’s Germany with her parents and brother in 1933 when she was nine years old. The family passed through Switzerland and France before arriving finally in England in 1936. Judith went to eleven different schools, worked in the Red Cross during the war, and won a scholarship to the Central School of Arts and Crafts in 1945. She worked as an artist, a BBC television scriptwriter and as author and illustrator of children’s books.

Her three autobiographical novels are based on her early wandering years (which against all the odds she greatly enjoyed), her adolescence in London during the war, and finally on a brief return to Berlin as a young married woman. The stories have been internationally acclaimed and, to the author’s considerable satisfaction, have done particularly well in Germany where they are sometimes used as an easy introduction to a difficult period of Germany history.

In 2012 Judith was awarded an OBE for her services to children’s literature and holocaust education, and in 2019 she was named Illustrator of the Year at the British Book Awards. Judith died in May 2019. Her much-loved stories have delighted generations of children.