Stig of the Dump - Abridged

Clive King was born in Richmond, Surrey, in 1924. When he was young his family moved to a village called Ash, near Sevenoaks in Kent, which is the setting for Stig of the Dump. He was educated at King's School, Rochester; Downing College, Cambridge and the School of Oriental and African Studies, London. During the war he served in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve and this, combined with his later work as a language teacher for the British Council, took him all over the world. Clive King attempted to learn fourteen languages including Tamil, Bengali, Gaelic and Anglo-Saxon. He said he was not incredibly successful with any of them, but many of his books deal with language difficulties of one sort or another.

Sir Tony Robinson is an award-winning writer, presenter, and actor, and the UK's foremost face of popular history. His television credits include Time Team (Channel 4), Blackadder (BBC1), The Worst Jobs In History (Channel 4), Walking Through History(Channel 4), Me and My Mum (ABC), Tony Robinson's Coast to Coast (Channel 5), Britain's Ancient Tracks (Channel 4), and more. As a children's television writer, he has won two RTS awards, a BAFTA, and the International Prix Jeunesse, and his work includes Central TV's Fat Tulip's Garden, Odysseus - the Greatest Hero of Them All, and Blood and Honey. He has also made a range of television documentaries, written 30 children's books, winning the Blue Peter Factual Book Award twice, and several books for adults, including his autobiography No Cunning Plan. In 2012 he was made a Fellow of Cardiff University, and he has been awarded honorary doctorates and masters' degrees by several leading universities. He is an ambassador for the Alzheimer's Society, and received a knighthood in 2013.