Alison Uttley

Alice Jane Taylor (later AU ) was born in a snowstorm at Castle Top Farm, near Cromford, in Derbyshire on the borders of the Peak District, a remote farm her family had owned for 200 years.

Yggdrasill, the magazine of Ashburne House , the women's residence at Victoria University of Manchester , printed a poem by Alice Jane Taylor (later AU ) about university life which contained the refrain Argument.

Heinemann received from AU the manuscript of her first book for small children (also the first in her most popular series), The Squirrel, the Hare and the Little Grey Rabbit, published later that year.

AU 's characters Little Grey Rabbit and Squirrel appeared as stuffed toys, ready for the Christmas market.

A child wrote to AU (about Hare Joins the Home Guard), Goebbels won't let the Nazis come now because Hare will stop them.

A bomb on the London offices of Faber destroyed (among other things) the typescript of AU 's play Little Grey Rabbit to the Rescue, which had been rejected for the stage by the Theatre Royal, Windsor four months earlier.

AU destroyed her Little Grey Rabbit contract by lighting the fire with it; she had to ask for replacement. This seems to have been a mishap, not a protest.

AU , whose experience of public speaking had included a lecture on Writing for Children, spoke bravely on BBC TV's Book Programme in the month of her ninety-first birthday.

AU died in hospital at High Wycombe; her son had just gone on holiday and was hard to reach.