William Nicholson's Extended Biography
William Nicholson was born in 1948, and grew up in Sussex and Gloucestershire. He was educated at Downside School and Christ's College, Cambridge, and then joined BBC Television, where he worked as a documentary film maker. There his ambition to write, directed first into novels, was channeled into television drama. His plays for television include Shadowlands and Life Story, both of which won the BAFTA Best Television Drama award in their year; other award-winners were Sweet As You Are and The March. In 1988 he received the Royal Television Society's Writer's Award. His first play, an adaptation of Shadowlands for the stage, was Evening Standard Best Play of 1990, and went on to a Tony Award winning run on Broadway. He was nominated for an Oscar for the screenplay of the film version, which was directed by Richard Attenborough and starred Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger.
Since then he has written more films - Sarafina, Nell, First Knight, Grey Owl , and Gladiator (as co-writer), for which he received a second Oscar nomination. He has written and directed his own film, Firelight; and three further stage plays, Map of the Heart, Katherine Howard and The Retreat from Moscow, which ran for five months on Broadway and received three Tony Award nominations.
His novel for older children, The Wind Singer, won the Smarties Prize Gold Award on publication in 2000, and the Blue Peter Book of the Year Award in 2001. Its sequel, Slaves of the Mastery, was published in May 2001, and the final volume in the trilogy, Firesong , in May 2002. The trilogy has been sold in every major foreign market, from the US to China.
He is now at work on a new sequence of novels for older children, called The Noble Warriors. The first book, Seeker, was published in the UK in September 2005. The second book, Jango, will be published in September 2006.
His novels for adults are The Society of Others (April 2004) and The Trial of True Love (April 2005).
He lives in Sussex with his wife Virginia and their three children.
(Extended biography courtesy of www.WilliamNicholson.co.uk.)
William Nicholson is the author of the acclaimed Wind on Fire trilogy as well as the screenplays for Gladiator and Shadowlands, both of which were nominated for Academy Awards. He has written to great acclaim for a variety of audiences—from television, to stage, to the big screen. Despite his success in those media, he was still determined to distinguish himself as a writer in the realm he loves most—books. What inspired William Nicholson to write for young readers? In a recent interview, he said that writing for film is similar to writing for children in that the story and passion are driving forces: “I think that children's literature comes from one of the most imaginative areas of the psyche.” He lives with his wife and their three children in Sussex, England.
