Lynne Reid Banks (1929-2024) was an actress in the early 1950s and later became one of the first women TV news reporters in Britain. She was the author of nearly 50 books for both adults and children, which garnered prizes and accolades and spawned film adaptations across the world, and her ground-breaking novel about single parenthood, The L-Shaped Room, became one of the classics of the twentieth century. For children, her novel Broken Bridge was nominated for the Carnegie Medal and Harry and the Poisonous Centipede was nominated for the Nestle Smarties Book Prize. In October 2013, Lynne won the J. M. Barrie Award for her outstanding contribution to children's arts.