John Christopher (Author) Christopher Samuel Youd was a British writer best known for his science fiction published under the pseudonym John Christopher. His many novels include The Death of Grass and The Possessors. He won the Guardian Prize in 1971 and the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis in 1976, Youd also wrote under several other names including Stanley Winchester, Hilary Ford and Samuel Youd. Robert Macfarlane (Introducer) Robert Macfarlane was born in Nottinghamshire in 1976. He is the author of Mountains of the Mind, The Wild Places, The Old Ways and Landmarks. Mountains of the Mind won the Guardian First Book Award and the Somerset Maugham Award and The Wild Places won the Boardman-Tasker Award. Both books have been adapted for television by the BBC. He is a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and writes on environmentalism, literature and travel for publications including the Guardian, the Sunday Times and The New York Times. He is currently working on an illustrated children's book about the natural world in collaboration with illustrator Jackie Morris.