Roger McGough
The son of a docker, ROGER McGOUGH was born in Liverpool in 1937. After reading Geography and French at the University of Hull, he went on to teach at a comprehensive school in Kirkby, but left in 1963 to become a member of the rock / poetry group, The Scaffold. He made his name as one of the Liverpool poets, with Brian Patten and the late Adrian Henri, included in The Mersey Sound: Penguin Modern Poets 10 (Penguin 1967). He was awarded an OBE in 1997 and the CBE in 2004, and was awarded the Freedom of the City of Liverpool 2001.
Roger has written over 50 poetry books for adults and children, including, for adults, Defying Gravity (1992), The Way Things Are (1999) and Everyday Eclipses (2002) and, for children, Sky in the Pie (1984) and Bad, Bad Cats (1999), both winners of the Signal Poetry award. In the autumn of 2003 he brought out two new books for children, All the Best and The Bee's Knees (both Penguin) and his Collected Poems (Viking).
Roger's first Bible-based storybook for children, Daniel and the Beast of Babylon is an archetypal tale of the wicked being outwitted...
Roger lives in Barnes, West London, with his wife, Hilary and their two children.
(Photo credit: Tony Hardacre.)