Lynne Reid Banks is a British author of books for children and adults. She has written forty books, including the best-selling children's novel The Indian in the Cupboard, which has sold over 10 million copies and has been successfully adapted to film. Her first novel, The L-Shaped Room, published in 1960, was an instant and lasting best seller. The L-Shaped Room was later made into a movie of the same name and led to two sequels, The Backward Shadow and Two is Lonely. Banks also wrote a biography of the Bront� family, entitled Dark Quartet, and a sequel about Charlotte Bront�, Path to the Silent Country. Banks was born in London, the only child of James and Muriel Reid Banks. She was evacuated to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada during World War II but returned after the war was over. She attended St Teresa's School in Surrey. Prior to becoming a writer, Banks was an actress, and also worked as a television journalist in Britain, one of the first women to do so. In 1962 Banks emigrated to Israel, where she taught for eight years on an Israeli kibbutz Yas'ur. 

July 31st, 1929 in London  /  Died:   Apr 4th, 2024