Judith Kerr

Judith Kerr was a German-born British writer and illustrator who created both enduring picture books such as the Mog series and The Tiger Who Came to Tea and acclaimed novels for older children such as the semi-autobiographical When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, which gave a child's-eye view of escaping Hitler's persecution in the Second World War. Born in the Weimar Republic, she came to Britain with her family in 1935 to escape persecution during the rise of the Nazis. She worked for the Red Cross, studied at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, and became a BBC television scriptwriter. She married screenwriter Nigel Kneale in 1954 and had two children with him. She began writing and illustrating children's books to entertain her own children, and published her first book, The Tiger Who Came to Tea, in 1968. It was followed by the Mog series, which featured a forgetful cat based on her own pets, and the Out of the Hitler Time trilogy, which drew on her own experiences as a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany. She received many awards and honours for her work, including the Booktrust Lifetime Achievement Award in 2016. She died of cancer at her home in London in 2019, aged 95.