Robert Atkinson Westall was born on October 7, 1929, in Tynemouth, Northumberland. He grew up in Tynemouth, graduated from the town high school, and finally left his childhood home in 1948 to attend Durham University. After college he served two years in the British Army's Royal Signals corps. In 1955, Westall received a doctorate in the Fine Arts from the University of London's prestigious Slade School of Art. Since then he has taught art at a local private school, produced art reviews for local and London papers, sold antiques, and written thirty books for children and young adults.

Westall claims to have started writing novels when he was twelve years old, but his first book to see publication was The Machine-Gunners in 1975.

He wrote the work, his most critically acclaimed novel, for his son Christopher who was then twelve years old.

At eighteen Christopher Westall was killed in...