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William Mayne (16 March 1928 - 24 March 2010) was a British writer of children's fiction. He was born in Hull, the son of a doctor and was educated at the choir school attached to Canterbury Cathedral and his memories of that time contributed to his early books. During the Second World War the school was evacuated to Cornwall. He lived for most of his life in North Yorkshire.

He was described as one of the outstanding children's authors of the 20th century by the Oxford Companion to Children's Literature, and won the Carnegie Medal in 1957 for A Grass Rope and the Guardian Award in 1993 for Low Tide. He wrote more than a hundred books, and is best known for his Choir School quartet comprising A Swarm in May, Choristers' Cake, Cathedral Wednesday and Words and Music, and his Earthfasts trilogy comprising Earthfasts, Cradlefasts and Candlefasts, an unusual evocation of the King Arthur legend.

A Swarm in May was filmed by the Children's Film Unit in 1983 and a five-part television series of Earthfasts was broadcast by the BBC in 1994.

Mayne was imprisoned for two and a half years in 2004 after admitting charges of child sexual abuse and was placed on the British sex offenders' register for life.

He was found dead at his home in Thornton Rust, North Yorkshire on the morning of March 24, 2010.

This author page uses material from the Wikipedia article "William Mayne", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0