Scoular Anderson

Born: 1946 in Sunderland
First Book: My First Joke Book (Corgi, 1986)
Awards: Short-listed for the 2005 Scottish Arts Council Children’s Book of the Year for Space Pirates and the Treasure of Salmagundy (Frances Lincoln 2004)

Scoular Anderson was born in Sunderland and was raised in the seaside town of Dunoon, Argyll. At the age of seven, he began filling sketchbooks with drawings, and by the age of nine was writing poems and creating strip-cartoon adventure stories.

When he was twelve, Scoular went away to boarding school, where he spent every free moment filling notebooks with sketches and writing. After leaving school, he studied graphic design at the Glasgow School of Art before moving to London to work as an illustrator for London University. During this time, he also worked as an illustrator and writer for various children’s publishers.

Scoular returned to Scotland in 1976 and began teaching art shortly afterwards at Cumbernauld High School in Glasgow, before moving back to Dunoon in 1986 to work as a freelance writer and illustrator. As well as illustrating other authors’ works, he has written over seventy books himself, including Space Pirates and the Treasure of Salmagundy (Frances Lincoln, 2004), which was short-listed for the 2005 Scottish Arts Council Children’s Book of the Year award. His Birlinn books include 1314 And All That and 1745 And All That. He has also illustrated the other books by Allan Burnett in the And All That series as well as Scottish Inventors and Scottish Criminals by Gary Smailes.