Robert Swindells

Quality 0.50 · 3 views · Updated 2 months ago

British author (born 1939)

title: "Robert Swindells" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["british-children's-writers", "carnegie-medal-in-literature-winners", "1939-births", "living-people", "writers-from-bradford"] description: "British author (born 1939)" topic_path: "arts" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Swindells" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary British author (born 1939) ::

Robert E. Swindells (born 20 March 1939) is an English author of children's and young adult fiction.

For the young-adult novel Stone Cold (Heinemann, 1993), which deals with homelessness, he won the annual Carnegie Medal from the CILIP, recognizing the year's outstanding children's book by a British subject.

Biography

Born in Bradford, Yorkshire, Swindells worked for a newspaper after leaving school aged 15. He served with the Royal Air Force and held various jobs before training as a Primary school teacher. While in training he wrote his first novel, When Darkness Comes, which was published by Brockhampton Press of Stenhousemuir in 1973. He combined writing with teaching until 1980 when he took up writing full-time. He was still writing as of his 71st birthday (20 March 2010).

He first won the Red House Children's Book Award with Brother in the Land (1984), a novel set in a post-apocalyptic world. Swindells was a supporter of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and is quoted as saying that the work "... came out of my own anger and frustration ... you can't kill selectively with nuclear weapons, you wipe out millions of people ...". He won three more Red House awards for Room 13 (1989), Nightmare Stairs (Short novel, 1998) and Blitzed (Younger readers, 2003).

In a 2010 by-election and in the 2011 local elections, Swindells stood as the Green Party of England and Wales candidate for the Worth Valley ward of Bradford City Council. In 2010, he took 11% of the vote, putting him in third place.

Awards

Swindells has won several annual book awards.

;Runners up, etc.

Selected works

  • When Darkness Comes (1973)
  • A Candle in the Night (1974)
  • Voyage to Valhalla (1976)
  • Ice Palace (1977)
  • The Weather Clerk (1979)
  • Ghost Ship to Ganymede (1980)
  • World-Eater (1983)
  • Brother in the Land (1984)
  • The Thousand Eyes of Night (1985)
  • Staying Up (1986)
  • A Serpent's Tooth (1988)
  • Room 13 (1989)
  • Follow a Shadow (1989)
  • Daz 4 Zoe (1990)
  • Stone Cold (1993)
  • Timesnatch (1994)
  • Inside The Worm (1994)
  • Unbeliever (1995)
  • Jacqueline Hyde (1996)
  • The Last Bus (1996)
  • Nightmare Stairs (1997)
  • Smash! (1997)
  • Hurricane Summer (1997)
  • Abomination (1998)
  • Dosh (1999)
  • Invisible! (1999)
  • The Orchard Book of Egyptian Gods and Pharaohs (2000)
  • Doodlebug Alley (2000)
  • A Wish for Wings (2001)
  • Wrecked (2001)
  • Blitzed (2002)
  • No Angels (2003)
  • Ruby Tanya (2004)
  • Roger's War (2004)
  • Branded (2005)
  • Snapshot (2005)
  • Snakebite (2006)
  • In the Nick of Time (2007)
  • Burnout (2007)
  • The Shade of Hettie Daynes (2008)
  • The Tunnel (2008)
  • Blitzed (2008)
  • A Skull in Shadows Lane (2012)
  • The Deep End (2013)
  • The Ghosts of Givenham Mansion (2021)

References

References

  1. "Robert Swindells". Channel 4 Learning.
  2. [https://lccn.loc.gov/75327241 "When darkness comes"]. Library of Congress Online Catalog. Retrieved 13 July 2012.
  3. "Bradford City Council Worth Valley By-election results". Bradford City Council.
  4. [https://www.redhousechildrensbookaward.co.uk/winners/pastwinners "Past Winners"]. Red House Book Award. Retrieved 24 November 2012.
  5. [http://www.angus.gov.uk/bookaward/previouswinners.htm "Angus Book Award: Previous Shortlists and Winners"] {{webarchive. link. (7 June 2007 . Angus Council. Retrieved 24 November 2012.)
  6. [http://www3.hants.gov.uk/sls/sls-readerpromotion/hampshire-book-award.htm Hampshire Book Award] {{Webarchive. link. (25 August 2007 . {{full citation needed). (November 2012)

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::

british-children's-writerscarnegie-medal-in-literature-winners1939-birthsliving-peoplewriters-from-bradford