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Mal Peet, writer, dies aged 67

Award-winning children's author Mal Peet, who wrote books about football, has died aged 67

Writer Mal Peet has died at the age of 67
Writer Mal Peet has died at the age of 67 Credit: Photo: Steffan Hill/Telegraph

Mal Peet, the award-winning author, has died aged 67.

Peet, who won the 2004 Branford Boase Award for Keeper and the 2006 Carnegie Medal for his historical novel Tamar, died on March 2, 2015, several months after being diagnosed with cancer.

Peet grew up in a council estate in North Walsham, Norfolk, in a family that he describes as "emotionally impaired". He said that he managed to survive living in a "very, very dull town by virtue of playing lots of football, riding his bike and getting books out of the local library. Three of his novels later featured football and the fictional South American sports journalist Paul Faustino.

He spent only one year at the University of Warwick – where he read English and American literature – before taking a multitude of jobs. "I've had all sorts," Peet recalled. "I was a teacher for a while, but I have a very low tolerance for routine, and gave it up. I’ve worked in a hospital mortuary (I didn’t much like the night shifts); I’ve been a builder and a plumber; I worked on a road-building crew in Canada; I’ve been (and still am, sometimes) a cartoonist and illustrator; I’ve written rather academic textbooks about poetry."

He became a full-time writer and illustrator in the face of what he called "his old enemy, boredom". He was best known for young-adult fiction and a series of children's books co-authored with his wife Elspeth Graham. His first book, Keeper, an excellent paperback story about football, also won a Nestle Children’s Book Award.

He recently published a witty and wonderful novel for adults called The Murdstone Trilogy, a satire on publishing and fantasy writing and the modern image-obsessed world.

His agent Peter Cox described him as "a writer's writer". He said: "Mal was universally adored and admired by other writers. His talent was as prodigious as his warm, wide-open heart. I have lost a dear friend, and we have all lost an author of exceptional genius. His best and most exciting years were still ahead: his premature death is utterly tragic."

Asked to describe how he wrote, Peet said: "The only word I would use without qualification is 'slowly'."

He is survived by his wife Elspeth and children Tom, Lauren and Charlie, and his grandchildren Grace and Ezra.