For over thirty years, Penelope Lively has been praised as one of the finest writers at work in Britain. She won the Carnegie Medal for her novel The Ghost of Thomas Kempe and the Whitbread Award for A Stitch in Time. She mostly writes for adults now, and has been shortlisted twice for the Booker Prize - and won the Prize itself in 1987 for her bestselling novel, Moon Tiger. She has been awarded numerous other prizes and commendations and in 2002 was created a CBE. She has two children, five grandchildren and lives in north London.