We are delighted to welcome illustrator and graphic novelist Raymond Briggs (a member of the SoA since 1968), Waterstones Children’s Laureate Cressida Cowell, and former Chair of the SoA Management Committee David Donachie to the SoA Council.

Membership of the Council, an honorary body of up to 60 eminent authors, is an accolade conferred by the Management Committee on members of high standing who have been exceptional in their support of the SoA.

Commenting on the appointment, Cressida Cowell said:

I feel deeply honoured to be asked to join the Council, on which there are so many authors I have admired and respected for years. This was a lovely surprise – thank you very much to all the authors for asking me.

David Donachie, who in February 2020 completed a four-year term as Chair of the SoA’s Management Committee, said:

I am delighted to be given this wonderful honour, and extremely grateful to the authors for nominating me. It has been a great pleasure serving on the Management Committee as Chair for all these years, and I look forward to seeing how the SoA progresses in the future.

We are also deeply saddened by the recent deaths of three former Council members: historian, travel writer, and trans pioneer Jan Morris, novelist and children’s author Jill Paton Walsh, and author, playwright and screenwriter Ronnie Harwood. All were stalwarts in their support of the SoA and will be sadly missed.

Cressida Cowell photo © Debra Hurford Brown

Raymond Briggs photo © David Sandison