Jill Paton Walsh, CBE (b. 29 April 1937) is an English novelist and children's writer. She was born as Gillian Bliss and educated at St. Michael's Catholic Grammar School, North Finchley and at Bar Convent, York, before attending St Anne's College, Oxford. In 1961, she married Antony Paton Walsh; they had one son and two daughters before separating. Paton Walsh's novels for children span all ages and include; Hengest's tale, The Dolphin Crossing, Fireweed, Goldengrove, The Emperor's Winding Sheet (Whitbread Children's Prizewinner 1974), Babylon, A Parcel of Patterns, Gaffer Samson's Luck (Smarties Prizewinner 1985), Birdy and the Ghosties, Grace, Thomas and the Tinners, and The Green Book. Her adult novels include Lapsing (about Catholic university students), A School for Lovers (a reworking of the plot of Mozart's Cosi fan tutte) and The Serpentine Cave (based on a lifeboat disaster in St Ives). Knowledge of Angels, a medieval philosophical novel, was shortlisted for the 1994 Booker Prize. She is the author of four detective stories featuring Imogen Quy; The Wyndham Case, A Piece of Justice, Debts of Dishonor and Bad Quartro. In 1998 she won acclaim for her seamless completion of Dorothy L. Sayers' unfinished novel, Thrones, Dominations. She has also completed another Lord Peter Wimsey novel, A Presumption of Death. In 1996, Jill Paton Walsh received the CBE for services to literature and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
