After several bouts with severe illnesses in early childhood, he attended Manchester Grammar School, probably the best secondary school in England, and then studied classics at Magdalen College, Oxford. He has described himself as the first educated member of his family and has throughout his career worked toward reintegrating the fragmentation resulting from an education that effectively cut him off from his background, linguistically and socially. He served in the British army, and in 1956 he married Ann Cook, with whom he has three children: Adam, Ellen, and Katharine. The marriage ended in divorce. In 1972 Garner married Griselda Greaves, with whom he has two children, Joseph and Elizabeth.
Garner turned away from a possible career as an athlete--transformed from a sickly child into a potential champion sprinter--and chose the isolated freedom of writing. His choice of audience was also conscious. In "A Bit More Practice" he said that "at the age of twenty-one, I could not imagine that I had anything worth saying to people twice my age," but once he realized that the traditional style and content appropriate for children's literature need not constrain him, he also did not deviate from that choice.
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