Margaret Ryan

Margaret Ryan is a former primary teacher who gave up teaching when the maths got too hard and she lost her teacher’s book with the answers at the back.

She was born in a park in Paisley-there was a hospital in the park, but that spoils the alliteration. She went to Jordanhill College of Education and, to earn some money during the long holidays, worked in a supermarket, a shoe shop and a sausage factory. To this day, she still buys groceries and wears shoes, but she never ever eats sausages. She started writing as a hobby and won a children’s story competition. To date she has written over eighty books for children, including some for reluctant readers. She won a Scottish Arts Council award for her book, The Queen’s Birthday Hat, and the first book in her series Roodica the Rude, set back in Celtic times when the Romans invaded Britain, was one of Richard and Judy’s picks for the launch of their Children’s Book Club.

Margaret now lives in an old mill in St Andrews with her husband, John, who regrets the lack of sausages in his diet, and some red squirrels who don’t.