Gervase Phinn
Photo © Richard Murphy
Professor Gervase Phinn taught for fourteen years before becoming an education adviser and school inspector. He is now a freelance lecturer, broadcaster and writer, a consultant for the Open University, honorary fellow of St. John's University, York, honorary fellow of Leeds Trinity University and fellow and visiting professor at the University of Teesside. He has numerous honorary degrees including Doctor of Letters from the Universities of Hull and Leicester, and Doctor of the University of Sheffield Hallam. He is president of the Society of Teachers of Speech and Drama and a former president of the School Library Association.
Gervase has published many articles and books and edited a wide range of poetry and short story collections along with many academic texts. Additionally he has published collections of his own plays, poems, picture books and short stories, including his anthologies of verse: Classroom Creatures, It Takes One to Know One, The Day Our Teacher Went Batty, Don't Tell the Teacher and Family Phantoms.
His books of stories for children, What's the Matter, Royston Knapper? and Royston Knapper: The Return of the Rogue were published by Child's Play and became best-sellers. His picture books Our Cat Cuddles, What I Like and Who Am I? are found in many a school library.
Gervase Phinn is probably best known for his best-selling autobiographical novels published by Penguin and set in the Yorkshire Dales, and his Little Village School series of novels published by Hodder.