Anthony Hill

His most recent book is "The Story of Billy Young, a teenager in Changi, Sandakan and Outram Road" (Penguin, 2012), written for adults and senior students. Anthony's previous historical novel for secondary students was "Captain Cook's Apprentice" (Penguin) about the HMB Endeavour voyage, which won a New South Wales (NSW) Premier's History Award for young people in 2009.Born in Melbourne in 1942, Anthony was a newspaper journalist before moving with his family to a country village in NSW where they ran an antique shop for five years. The experience formed the basis of his first two books, "The Bunburyists" and "Antique Furniture in Australia".

Anthony Hill's first book for children, "Birdsong", was published in 1988, followed in 1994 by his prize-winning novella "The Burnt Stick" (Viking/Penguin) illustrated by Mark Sofilas. This story from the 'Stolen Generations' is still widely read in primary schools. The two combined again to produce "Spindrift" (Puffin) in 1996, the same year in which Anthony Hill published "The Grandfather Clock". His collection, "Growing Up & Other Stories", was published in 1999.For 10 years Anthony Hill was a speech-writer for the Governor-General in Canberra, until retiring in 1999 to concentrate full-time on his own writing.His biographical novel, "Soldier Boy", about James Martin, the youngest known Anzac, was published in 2001. It won a NSW Premier's Literary Award, and is now in its 19th printing. A children's story, "Forbidden", appeared in 2002, and also another First World War biographical novel, "Young Digger", as a companion book to "Soldier Boy". "The Shadow Dog", a memoir of Anthony Hill's own dog, Sebastian, was published in 2003, illustrated by Andrew McLean.In 2005 Penguin published "Animal Heroes", a collection of stories about the dogs, horses, pigeons, mascots and other animals that have served with Australia's armed forces in peace and war, and later "Harriet" about a Galapagos tortoise believed to have been taken from the islands on board the survey ship HMS Beagle, on which the famous scientist Charles Darwin was also a passenger.