Linda Newbery was eight years old when she decided that she wanted to be a writer. “So, I wrote a lot – usually in secret because they told me at school that writing wasn’t a proper job” she says. “I was inspired by the books I loved. There was an abridged version of Black Beauty which I knew almost by heart, and I was very fond of Bambi by Felix Salten – I have never seen the film.”
This neatly introduces the theme of animals and their welfare, which has been threaded through Linda’s work all her life and is very important to her. One of her most recent books (2021) – unusually not fiction – is Cruelty Free, which is about how our everyday choices affect animals and the environment.
“At the beginning Ireason, I can’t do that with poetry. It has to be old fashioned pen and paper.”
