Peter Malcolm de Brissac Dickinson was born on the 16th of December 1927
He was an English author and poet, best known for children’s books and detective stories
Dickinson won the annual Carnegie Medal from the Library Association for both Tulku (1979) and City of Gold (1980), each being recognised as the year’s outstanding children’s book by a British subject
Through 2012 he is one of seven writers to win two Carnegies; no one has won three
Dickinson was born in Livingstone, Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia), the second of the four sons of a man in the colonial service and a farmer’s daughter
As a child he loved stories about knights in armour and explorers, such as Ivanhoe and King Solomon’s Mines, and read “anything by Kipling”, who influenced his writing greatly
His parents moved to England so that he and his brothers could attend English schools
His father died suddenly but Dickinson entered Saint Ronan’s prep school in 1936 with support from the family
For years he listed manual labour as one pastime; at 85 he listed only bridge and gardening
He died after an illness on 16 December 2015, his 88th birthday