Katharine Mary Saunders (4 May 1960 – 21 April 2023) was an English writer, actress and journalist. She won the Betty Trask Award and the Costa Children's Book Award and was twice shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal.

Early life and education

Katharine Mary Saunders was born on 4 May 1960 to an Anglo Catholic family in London, the eldest of six children. Her father was public relations advocate Basil Saunders, and her mother was journalist Betty (née Smith) Saunders. She was educated at the Camden School for Girls.

Career

Television

Saunders worked as an actress through her twenties. Her work included an appearance as a policewoman dated by Rodney Trotter in an Only Fools and Horses episode in 1982. She was also a regular contributor to radio and television, with appearances on the Radio 4 programmes Woman's Hour, Start the Week and Kaleidoscope. She was, with Sandi Toksvig, a guest on the first episode of the long-running news quiz programme Have I Got News for You. The BBC children's series Belfry Witches was based on her series of children's books about two mischief-making witches.

Writing

Saunders wrote for newspapers and magazines in the UK, including The Sunday Times, Sunday Express, Daily Telegraph, She and Cosmopolitan. She wrote many novels, such as Wild Young Bohemians, and also co-wrote Catholics and Sex (1992) with Peter Stanford, who was then editor of the Catholic Herald. Saunders and Stanford later presented a television series based on the book on Channel 4. Saunders won the annual Costa Children's Book Award for Five Children on the Western Front (2014), a contribution to the classic fantasy series that E. Nesbit inaugurated in 1902 with Five Children and It. She was also a contributor to the authorised Winnie-the-Pooh sequel, The Best Bear in All the World. Her children's novel The Land of Neverendings has been shortlisted for the 2019 Carnegie Medal, as was Five Children on the Western Front in 2016.

Personal life and death

Saunders married Philip Wells in 1985; they had a son and later divorced. Their son died by suicide when he was 19 years old. Saunders had multiple sclerosis. Her health declined in the years after her son's death, but she continued to write until the end of her life. She died from cancer at her home in Archway, London, on 21 April 2023, at the age of 62.

Selected books

Novels

The Laetitia Rodd Mysteries

Children's books

Filmography

Film

Television