Biography
Michelle Magorian was born on 6 November 1947 in Southsea, Hampshire. She studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London and later at the Marcel Marceau School of Mime in Paris. She worked as an actress before turning to writing.
Goodnight Mister Tom, her first novel, was published in 1981 after several years of research and writing. The book draws on extensive research into the wartime evacuation of children from British cities, the history of the blitz, and — most painfully — the history of child abuse in the period. Magorian was careful to portray the abuse with honesty while avoiding gratuitousness, and the novel's treatment of Willie Beech's recovery under Tom Oakley's care remains one of the most carefully and compassionately rendered in children's fiction.
The book won the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize in 1982 and the International Reading Association Children's Book Award. It was adapted for BBC television in 1998, with John Thaw as Tom Oakley. The adaptation brought the book to a new generation and remains one of the most praised British children's television adaptations.
Magorian has written several other novels, including Back Home (1984) and A Spoonful of Jam (1998), but Goodnight Mister Tom remains her most celebrated and widely taught work.