(née Elspeth Hallsmith; 23 August 1923 – 24 April 2018) was an English , children’s writer, and autobiographer. Her autographical memoir, ' (1948), won the 1949 . Her novel, The Far Cry (1949), won the for fiction. Her second and third volumes of autobiography, The Great Western Beach: A Memoir of a Cornish Childhood between the Wars (2008) and As Green as Grass: Growing Up Before, During and After the Second World War (2013), were critically acclaimed. She also wrote a non-fiction book Village