Diana Wynne Jones was born on August 16,1934, in London, England. She had an unusual and unstable childhood that greatly influenced her writing career. When Jones was five, her parents undertook the first of several dislocations because of the outbreak of World War II. She spent some months with her grandparents in Wales.

They spoke in rolling paragraphs and syllables that Jones could not understand. She noted later that these sounds remained to flow like music in her mind while she wrote.

By 1943 Jones resided in a rural Essex village, where her parents managed a young adult conference/cultural center and school.

The parents deliberately resided in the main residence apart from Jones and her two younger sisters, whom they housed neglectfully in an uncomfortable hut. The three girls, all avid readers, could never get enough books. Their father kept children's novels by Arthur Ransome...