William Mayne was born on March 16, 1928. Before dropping out of school at 17, he was a chorister at Canterbury Cathedral from 1937 until 1942. He wrote more than 100 books during his lifetime and is best known for his Choir School quartet comprising of A Swarm in May, Choristers' Cake, Cathedral Wednesday and Words and Music, and his Earthfasts trilogy comprising of Earthfasts, Cradlefasts and Candlefasts. He won numerous awards including the Carnegie Medal in 1957 for A Grass Rope, the Guardian Award in 1993 for Low Tide, and the Kurt Maschler prize in 1997 for Lady Muck. He also wrote under the pseudonyms Martin Cobalt, Dynely James and Charles Molin. In 2004, he was convicted of 11 charges of sexual abuse with young girls and was sentenced to two and a half years in prison and placed on the sex offenders' register for life. His books were largely removed from shelves from 2004 onwards, but he continued to write. He died on March 24, 2010 at the age of 82.
