Lynne Reid Banks (1929-2024) British Author

Lynne Reid Banks (1929-2024) British Author, Lynne Reid Banks Dead at 94, Lynne Reid Banks Find a Grave Memorial

Lynne Reid Banks was an Author, Television Screenwriter, Journalist. A writer of both adult and children-themed books, she will be remembered for the bestselling works “The L-Shaped Room” (1960) and “The Indian in the Cupboard” (1980). Born into a Jewish family, her father was a physician, her mother was an actress, she fled England to Canada during World War II in 1940.

Following the war, she returned with her family to England and with aspirations of becoming an actress, she enrolled at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. During the 1950s, she became a television journalist on British TV and interviewed numerous famous personalities of which include Charles Chaplin, Agatha Christie and Louis Armstrong. Additionally during this period, she began writing stories for the television series “BBC Sunday-Night Theatre” and Armchair Theatre.

Her book The L-Shaped Room was made into a 1962 motion picture adaptation, and her work The Indian in the Cupboard became a film version in 1980. Her books Letters to My Israeli Sons: The Story of Jewish Survival” (1979) and Tom Country: An Oral History of the Israeli War of Independence” (1982) depicted her years of living in a Kibbutz with her husband.

Lynne Reid Banks Wiki Bio, Life and Career

Banks was born in Barnes, London, the only child of doctor James and actress Muriel Reid Banks. She was evacuated to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada during World War II, with her mother and cousin, and returned after the war was over. She attended St Teresa’s School Effingham in Surrey. Before becoming a writer, Banks was an actress, attending drama school, and in 1955 began working as a television journalist at ITN, one of the first women to do so in Britain. However, Banks felt she was pigeonholed into writing about certain subjects, and was often put to work writing scripts.^[4]

In 1960, Banks released her first book, The L-Shaped Room, to massive success.

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In 1962, Banks emigrated to Israel, where she taught for eight years on a kibbutz, Yas’ur. In 1965, she married Chaim Stephenson (1926–2016), a sculptor, with whom she had three sons.^[9] Although not Jewish, she became an Israeli citizen.

Although the family returned to England in 1971, the influence of her time in Israel can be seen in some of her books (including One More River and its sequel, Broken Bridge, and other books, such as An End to Running and Children at the Gate) which are set partially or mainly on kibbutzim.^{[citation needed]} In England, the family lived in the London suburbs and Beaminster, Dorset.

In October 2013, Banks won the J. M. Barrie award for outstanding contribution to children’s arts.

In her later years, she lived in Shepperton, Surrey, UK. Banks died from cancer at a care facility in Surrey, on 4 April 2024, at the age of 94.