Cressida Cowell

Cressida Cowell was born on 15 April 1966 in London. She is the daughter of Michael Hare, 2nd Viscount Blakenham. Her uncle, by marriage, is U.S Supreme Court justice Stephen Breyer. As a child, Cowell states she "grew up in London and on a small, uninhabited island off the west coast of Scotland," and that it was during summers spent on the Inner Hebrides where she first began to develop her writing and drawing talents: "I spent a great deal of time as a child on a tiny, uninhabited island off the west coast of Scotland...By the time I was eight, my family had built a small stone house on the island, and with the boat, we could nearly fish for enough food to feed the family for the whole summer. "From then on, every year we spent four weeks of the summer and two weeks of the spring on the island. The house was lit by candle-light, and there was no telephone or television, so I spent a lot of time drawing and writing stories." Cowell attended Keble College, Oxford where she studied English, and she also attended Saint Martin's School of Art and Brighton University where she learned illustration. Cressida Cowell presently resides in London with her husband Simon, a former director and interim CEO of the International Save the Children Alliance; daughters Maisie and Clementine; and son Alexander. Cressida is an ambassador for the National Literacy Trust and the Reading Agency, a Trustee of World Book Day and a founder patron of the Children's Media Foundation. She has won numerous prizes, including The Blue Peter Book Award.