HENRY TREECE was born in the West Midlands in December 1911. Educated at Wednesbury High School he won a scholarship to Birmingham University where he graduated in 1933. Wartime service as an intelligence officer with RAF Bomber Command interrupted a very fine teaching career. His literary career began as a poet; Messrs Faber published four volumes. Contact with George Orwell helped him enter the world of radio broadcasting of verse plays, short stories and schools programmes.

In 1952 came Treece's first historical novel, The Dark Island, and during the years until his death in June 1966 he wrote a succession of Celtic novels for adults, including The Great Captains, The Golden Strangers and Red Queen, White Queen, as well as the Greek novels Electra, Jason and Oedipus. The Green Man, in 1966, was the last adult work . His work also included criticism and a number of co-edited anthologies War-Time Harvest, Transformation and others. Among the many historical novels for children are the Roman books Legions of the Eagle and The Eagles Have Flown; the trilogy Viking's Dawn, The Road to Miklagard and Viking's Sunset; Man with a Sword (Hereward the Wake); and the much praised posthumously published The Dream Time. He was survived by his widow, Mary Treece.