Edward Blishen (29 April 1920 – 13 December 1996) was an English author and broadcaster. He may be known best for the first of two children's novels based on Greek mythology, written with Leon Garfield, illustrated by Charles Keeping, and published by Longman in 1970. For The God Beneath the Sea Blishen and Garfield won the 1970 Carnegie Medal in Literature from the Library Association, recognising the year's best children's book by a British subject.
There is also his series of autobiographical books, including A Cack-Handed War (1972), a story describing his experiences as a conscientious objector, set against the backdrop of the Second World War and Roaring Boys (1955), an honest account of teaching in a London secondary modern school in the 1950s, a book still valuable to understand teaching in a "rough" part of a city. Its sequel, This Right Soft Lot, was published in 1969. He finished the concluding volume of his autobiographical sequence, Mind How You Go, in 1996, just before his death; it was published posthumously by Constable in 1997.
Read more about Edward Blishen: Biography, Selected Works
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“We take along a carrot
As refreshment for the parrot,
And a little can of jungleberry tea.”
—Charles Edward Carryl (1841–1920)
“The work was like peeling an onion. The outer skin came off with difficulty ... but in no time you’d be down to its innards, tears streaming from your eyes as more and more beautiful reductions became possible.”
—Edward Blishen (b. 1920)