Alan Garner

Alan Garner, the son of Colin and Marjorie Garner, was born ("with the cord wrapped twice round my throat") in his grandmother's front room in Congleton, Cheshire on 17th October 1934, and grew up in Alderley Edge, where his father's family have lived for more than three hundred years, being craftsmen in the area. He completed two years' national service in the Royal Artillery as a Second Lieutenant. He began writing his first novel, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, at the age of twenty-two.