Gillian Bliss was born on 29 April 1937 to John L. and Patricia D. Bliss in London. She received her early education (1943-1955) at St. Michael's Convent, a day school in North Finchley, London. She earned a diploma in education and an M.A. in English from St. Anne's College, Oxford (1955-1959). From 1959 to 1962 she taught English at Enfield Girls' Grammar School. In 1961 she married Antony Paton Walsh, a chartered secretary, and started to raise her family. Her husband continued in his career while she stayed at home with the children: Edmund Alexander, Margaret Ann, and Helen Clare. Paton Walsh started to write shortly after the arrival of her first child.
The often painful experience of maturing from adolescence to adulthood is a common theme in Paton Walsh's books. She has said that she is fascinated by the relationship of child and adult and the process--never completed, always in critical stages of advance and change--by which one becomes the other. This fascination, combined with her belief that what really happened long ago is bound to make the best story possible, has produced some fine historical novels. In her 1972 "History is Fiction" article, Paton Walsh defends and defines the historical novel.
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