Judith Kerr

Judith Kerr was born in Berlin, the daughter of Alfred Kerr, one of Germany's most famous theatre critics and an outspoken opponent of the Nazis. In February 1933, weeks after Hitler became chancellor and tipped off that his passport was about to be seized, he fled abroad. His wife and two children followed soon after, the day before the election that cemented Nazi rule. Judith, aged nine, was allowed to bring one toy. She left behind a pink rabbit. Her father's books were burned in public that May.

The family moved to Paris, then in 1936 to London, where they were poor for years and her father, once celebrated, could find little work. Judith left school to help support the family, worked for the Red Cross during the war and won a scholarship to art school. Her mother twice attempted suicide. Her father died in 1948.

She became a textile designer, then a scriptwriter at the BBC, where she met her husband, the writer Nigel Kneale. It was only after her own children were born, and after telling them a bedtime story about a tiger who eats everything in the house, that she wrote and illustrated The Tiger Who Came to Tea in 1968. She was 45.

The Mog books followed, and When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, her account of the family's escape. She published her last books in her nineties and died in 2019 at 95.