Richard Adams (1920тАУ2016) was educated at Bradfield College and Worcester College, Oxford. He served in the Second World War and in 1948 joined the civil service. In the mid-1960s he completed his first novel, Watership Down, for which he struggled for several years to find a publisher. It was eventually awarded both the Carnegie Medal and the Guardian Award for childrenтАЩs fiction for 1972. He would go on to publish several more books, including Shardik, Tales from Watership Down, Maia, The Plague Dogs, and The Girl in a Swing.
Madeline Miller is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Song of Achilles, which won the Orange WomenтАЩs Prize for Fiction 2012, and Circe, which was short-listed for the WomenтАЩs Prize for Fiction 2019. Her books have been translated into over thirty-two languages.