Jill Paton Walsh: Knowledge of Angels author dies at 83

Paton Walsh won the Whitbread Prize (for a children's novel) in 1974

Novelist and children's author Jill Paton Walsh has died at the age of 83, her agent has confirmed.

The London-born writer won numerous awards for her children's books, including The Whitbread Prize in 1974 for The Emperor's Winding Sheet.

She self-published her third novel, Knowledge of Angels, after failing to find a UK publisher - it went on to be shortlisted for the 1994 Booker Prize.

Paton Walsh received a CBE for services to literature in 1996.

She was born Gillian Bliss in 1937 and was educated in north Finchley, London, before graduating from St Anne's College, Oxford.

She went on to teach English at a grammar school in Enfield, north London, for three years between 1959 and 1962.

In 1961 she married Anthony Paton Walsh and they had three children although the couple later split.

'Late starter'

Paton Walsh embarked on her career writing children's fiction, including some of her best known works, Fireweed, Unleaving, A Parcel of Patterns and Gaffer Samson's Luck, all published in the 70s and 80s.

Her later adult novels included Lapsing (1986), The Serpentine Cave (1997) and A Desert in Bohemia (2000).

Paton Walsh was also known for continuing the work of Dorothy L Sayers with her Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane stories.

In an interview published on her website, she described herself as a "late starter" to writing, at the age of 26.

"When I began to write, I was living at home with a baby, and missing the children I had been teaching," she explained.

"I didn't feel very grown-up, and I realised I knew a lot about what my second formers had liked to read, and what they had not liked. I thought I might manage a story to please them."

Paton Walsh also created several picture books for small children, including When I Was Little Like You, Connie Came to Play and When Grandma Came.