Magorian's first ambition was to be an actress and after three years of study at the Rose Bruford College of Speech and Drama, she went to two years of Marcel Marceau's L'école Internationale de Mime in Paris. All this time she had been secretly writing stories. In her mid-twenties she became interested in children's books, and decided to write one herself.

The result was Goodnight Mister Tom, a winner of the Guardian Award and the International Reading Association Award. The book has also been adapted as a musical. There is also a DVD. Since then she has published four more novels, two collections of poetry, a collection of short stories and two picture books.

Michelle Magorian was born in Southsea. As a child she spent as much time as possible in the King's Theatre in Portsmouth and her ambition was always to go on the stage.

Michelle studied drama, including some time studying mime in Paris. From there she launched into a professional acting career and spent a few years touring all over the country - from Scotland to Devon and then Yorkshire - working in repertory companies, taking any part she could. Michelle's worst stage part was playing Orinoco the Womble in a musical.

Besides acting, Michelle had always enjoyed writing and she wrote Goodnight Mister Tom in a novel-writing class. The idea for the book came from the colours in a song from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat. She thought of brown as an earthy, old colour and green as a colour of youth. The character of William Beech came into her head because she thought of a beech tree with its slim trunk and it gave her the idea for a slim young boy. Details for the story came from her mother's tales about her time as a nurse in the Second World War. It took Michelle four and a half years to write Goodnight Mister Tom because she was also working in the theatre. Immediately it was published it was a huge success, and the story has now been published all over the world.

Michelle followed Good Night Mister Tom with Back Home, another story about the war - this time about adapting to coming home in 1945 after five years in the USA.

A Little Love Song (Not a Swan in the USA) is about gaining inderpendance and finding love in wartime Britian

Most of Michelle's other books are also set in the mid-1900s, around the life of the theatre.

In 2007, she received an honorary doctorate from Portsmouth University.

Just Henry won the Children's Book category in the 2008 Costa Book Awards.