Jill Paton Walsh (1937-2020) was an award-winning author of many books for children, young adults, and adults including The Green Book, A Parcel of Patterns, the Booker Prize shortlisted Knowledge of Angels, and the Whitbread Prize winner The Emperor’s Winding Sheet. She completed Dorothy L. Sayers’ unfinished Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane mystery manuscript, the international bestseller Thrones, Dominations, and continued Sayers’ series with A Presumption of Death, The Attenbury Emeralds, and The Late Scholar.

She held numerous posts connected to literature, including an Arts Council Creative Writing Fellowship, being a Whitbread Prize judge, and serving on the committee of the Society of Authors. She contributed articles and reviews to many journals. In 1996, Walsh was awarded a CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) for services to literature and was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Photo: John Rowe Townsend