Alison Prince, who has died aged 88, was an author of more than 50 books for children, as well as an artist, poet and musician, and a TV scriptwriter best known for the BBC’s classic stop-motion animation series Trumpton.
Her first script for children’s TV was for the BBC pre-school programme Watch with Mother, which she wrote following the birth of her children. With Joan Hickson, another young mother whom she had met in a local playground, Alison created Joe, a story about a little boy whose parents ran a motel.
It was broadcast in 1966 and others followed. More Joe stories were published in comics and in a Joe annual and there were also books, including Joe and a Horse and Other Stories from Watch With Mother (1968), and Joe and the Nursery School and Joe Moves House (both 1972).
Alison had studied at the Slade School of Art and taught art in a secondary school and this artistic background combined with her storytelling skills were exactly what was needed for developing ideas for the BBC’s children’s programmeJackanory. Alison both wrote and presented stories for Jackanory and was then invited by Monica Sims, the head of BBC children’s programmes, to write the script for Trumpton.
A follow-up to the hugely successful Camberwick Green, Trumpton – which aired in 1967 – was also a puppet-based series, about the goings on of a small town as experienced by the local firemen. Writing for animated puppets was a new experience but, as Alison described in a later interview, she took up the opportunity. “I didn’t have a TV, but I had three kids to feed, so I said yes.”
She soon realised that her storytelling would be shaped by what the technology could do. Going to see Trumpton’s creator Gordon Murray filming a test sequence, she saw the limitations. “It dawned on me how quaint the remit was. You can’t depict flames using stop-motion, nor can you do smoke and water. So I realised I would have to write 13 stories about a fire brigade that never went anywhere near a fire.”
Alison also had a problem with the firemen characters. With their uniform and near matching faces they all looked more or less the same. Her first job was to give them different identities. “I looked at the sequence over and over again and thought: ‘Well, there’s one who looks a bit lanky. I’ll call him Dibble. Grub’ was the silly one who came tumbling in late, having obviously been interrupted halfway through a ham sandwich. Two were absolutely identical, so I felt they must be twins: Pugh and Pugh. Another one, who had a certain largeness of gesture, I imagined to be Irish. He became Barney McGrew.’”
Alison wrote the 13 episodes at speed while watching the family washing go round at the local launderette. She saw it just as “a little job” and sold the script for each episode outright for £15, having no idea that the programme would become the success that it did.
Scriptwriting for children’s TV launched Alison’s book-writing career, which was also almost all for children. She had an easy fluency that she applied to stories of any kinds and for all ages. Her tales were warm-hearted adventures with a variety of settings and characters, written with the express intention of entertaining and amusing readers.
She had a light and humorous touch and particularly enjoyed writing for newly confident readers, especially when she put animals at the centre of the stories, as in Bumble (2001), the story of a hamster aptly named for his large rear, and Spud (2003), told through the eyes of the big-hearted and big-stomached eponymous doggy hero.
For older readers she was deft at writing historical stories, including How’s Business (1987), set in the second world war, and The Lost King: Richard III and the Princes in the Tower (2014). In all her historical novels she balanced authenticity and accessibility, and was equally sure-footed with contemporary settings. She achieved critical success most notably for The Sherwood Hero, a contemporary remake of the Robin Hood legend set in 1990s Glasgow, for which she was a joint winner, with Philip Pullman, of the 1996 Guardian children’s fiction prize. Later, her thriller Oranges and Murder was the Scottish Arts Council’s children’s book of the year in 2002.
Alison never stopped writing; interviewed when she was 86 she said she had no lack of ideas, just less time to write them down. Her books continued to be successful in the UK and were also translated into other languages, including Danish, German, Japanese and Welsh. Her notable contribution to children’s books from the 70s onwards was recognised in 2005 when she was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Leicester for services to children’s literature.
For adults, Alison wrote a biography of each of the great children’s writers Kenneth Grahame (2015) and Hans Christian Andersen (1998). She also wrote The Necessary Goat (1992), a collection of essays on formative thinking created during a fellowship in creative writing at Jordanhill College, Glasgow. A lover of poetry from childhood, she wrote two collections of poems, The Whifflet Train (2003) and Waking at Five Happens Again (2016), and had many single poems published in magazines. She won the Literary Review’s grand poetry prize twice.
Alison was born in Beckenham, Kent, where she was educated at the local girls’ grammar school. Her father, Charles, worked in the City as the manager of the Yorkshire Bank in London, while her mother, Louise (nee David), who initially trained as a nurse, was instrumental in developing the local arts council in Bromley and later became mayor of Bromley.
From Beckenham girls, Alison won a scholarship to the Slade. Its influence never left her and she regarded herself as much an artist as a writer. On graduating, Alison found it hard to earn a living from her art; instead, she trained as a teacher at Goldsmiths College, London, and taught art at the Elliott school in Putney, south-west London.
Following her marriage in 1957 to Goronwy Parry, a geography and sports teacher at the school, and the birth of their three children, Alison moved into teaching art classes for adults. She also got work as a reviewer and began writing short stories for magazines, before her success with television scriptwriting.
From her early days as a teacher, Alison valued working with children and loved the responses they offered to her work. One of her most prized writing experiences was for How’s Business, created during weekly sessions in which the story was teased out with a group of children, under the auspices of a writers in schools project. The book was later made into a film (1992) and Alison remained in touch for the rest of her life with several of the children who had taken part.
Among family and friends, Alison had the same enjoyment in being around children. She loved the directness of their thinking and their freedom and expression, and was happy to join them in make-believe and play.
She loved the countryside and had a lifelong interest in green living and recycling, which she first put into effect when she ran a small farm in Suffolk for eight years.
In the 80s she moved to the Scottish island of Arran, where she campaigned on green issues in articles under the heading “On the Green” for the Arran Banner. She also served on the Arran community council, helped sustain the local poetry society and writers group and, as an excellent clarinet player, was a member of the Jazz Café Band.
Goronwy died in 1991. She is survived by their three children, Samantha, Andy and Ben, her son John from an earlier relationship, by six grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
• Alison Prince, writer, born 26 March 1931; died 12 October 2019
