Leon Garfield was born on July 14, 1921, in Brighton, England. After attending grammar school in Brighton, he briefly studied art and then served for five years in the Army Medical Corps. He worked for twenty years in a London hospital as a biochemical technician while establishing himself as a writer.

He lives in London.

Garfield taught himself to write fiction by imitating authors such as Lewis Carroll, Hans Christian Andersen, Jonathan Swift, Daniel Defoe, and Robert Louis Stevenson. Although usually categorized as a writer for juveniles, he prefers to call his books "family novels," accessible to the intelligent twelve-yearold and still enjoyable for the adult.

After writing various stories aimed at the adult reader, Garfield achieved his first real success with Jack Holborn, originally submitted as an adult novel but published in shortened form as a juvenile book. Inspired by Robert Louis Stevenson's Master of...