Frank Cottrell-Boyce

As a successful screenwriter as well as novelist, there has always been lively interplay between the page and the screen in the work of Frank Cottrell-Boyce. Cutting his teeth on staff writing jobs on Coronation Street and Brookside, Cottrell-Boyce moved into writing for film with a productive working relationship with the director Michael Winterbottom. His debut children’s novel, Millions, was adapted from his screenplay of the same name for the Danny Boyle-directed movie and scooped the 2004 Carnegie Medal. In 2012 he won the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize for The Unforgotten Coat, a critically acclaimed novel about two Mongolian refugee children trying to fit in at their Liverpool school. Cottrell-Boyce was also commissioned by Ian Fleming’s estate to write a series of sequels to Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, the first of which came out in 2011. In 2024, Cottrell-Boyce was selected as the 13th Waterstones Children's Laureate; his extensive CV and unquestionable storytelling abilities making him the perfect candidate for such a crucial and high-profile role.