Richard Adams was born in 1920 and later went on to study at Worcester College, Oxford (of which he was a Scholar). He served for five and a half years in the army during the Second World War and then joined the higher civil service in Whitehall. He is most well known as the author of Watership Down, published in 1972, which won both the Carnegie Medal and the Guardian Award for Children's Literature. Nicola Bayley has illustrated many acclaimed picture books, including The Mousehole Cat, which was chosen as the British Book Awards Best Illustrated Children's Book of the Year. She has also been Commended for the Kate Greenaway, shortlisted for the Kurt Maschler Award and won the Bologna Book Fair prize. Most recently she has illustrated two new books written by renowned poet Brian Patten, The Big Snuggle-up and Can I Come Too?.