Geoffrey Trease

Geoffrey Trease (1909 – 1998) was born in Nottingham; he was the son of a wine merchant. He was a clever boy and won a scholarship to Nottingham High School. He soon read all the classic children’s fiction and began to produce his own British Boys’ Magazine. This featured “stories of adventure and British pluck from all corners of the globe”. Later he won a classics scholarship to Oxford but gave it up to go and work in London as a social worker in the East End and a struggling journalist on the Bloomsbury fringes. He then became a teacher in Clacton – on –Sea, but soon returned to a writing career.

His first book was published when he was 25 and he went on to write over 100 books for both children and adults. His books ranged through history and included fiction and non-fiction titles. One of his non-fiction books This is Your Century won the important New York Herald Tribune award. His books have a world-wide appeal and have been published in twenty languages, including Icelandic and Estonian.

In 1940 Cue For Treason, his most popular and successful book, was published. The setting was a company of strolling players in Shakespeare’s time and a plot to kill Queen Elizabeth I. He was finishing the book during the opening months of World War II, not knowing whether he would be called up for National Service, or still be alive when it was published. Warehouse stocks were destroyed in the London Blitz. It was also published in New York and Toronto and, as soon as paper became available again, it was reissued in Britain. His imagination went on to take in ancient Greece, Ceausescu’s Romania, the French and Russian revolutions and restoration England. He never lost his energy and creativity and delighted generations of young readers.