# Ian Serraillier

Ian Serraillier (24 September 1912 – 28 November 1994) was an English novelist and poet. He retold legends from England, Greece and Rome and was best known for his children's books, especially The Silver Sword (1956), a wartime adventure story that the BBC adapted for television in 1957 and again in 1971.

## Early life and education

Serraillier, born in London on 24 September 1912, was the eldest of the four children of Lucien Serraillier (1886–1919) and Mary Kirkland Rodger (1883–1940). His father died in the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic.
Serraillier was educated at Brighton College, a public school, and at St Edmund Hall, Oxford. He then taught English at Wycliffe College, Gloucestershire in 1936–1939, Dudley Boys Grammar School, Worcestershire, in 1939–1946, and Midhurst Grammar School, West Sussex, in 1946–1961.

## Pacifism

As a Quaker Serraillier was granted conscientious objector status in World War II, and served as an air raid warden during the conflict. He was a member of the pacifist Peace Pledge Union.

## Writing and editing

In 1946, Serraillier published his first three children's books: They Raced for Treasure, a story of sailing, treasure and spies, and Thomas and the Sparrow. These were followed by several more adventure stories, including his best-known one The Silver Sword (1956), which follows the story of four refugee children, three of them siblings: Ruth, Edek, and Bronia. The fourth, Jan, is another of the many Warsaw war orphans, and has somehow met their father. The four children search for the siblings' parents in the chaos of Europe just after the Second World War. The book appeared in the United States under the title Escape from Warsaw.
From 1961, Serraillier spent most of his time writing fiction and non-fiction, poems, and educational programmes for television. He also retold classic and ancient legends for children, in prose and verse, including Beowulf, works by Chaucer, English folklore, and Greek and Roman myths. In 1948, he and with his wife, Anne Margaret Rogers, founded the New Windmill Series for Heinemann Educational Books, to provide inexpensive editions of worthwhile fiction, travel and biography for older readers. He continued to co-edit the series until the early 1990s, when Alzheimer's disease set in.
The Ivory Horn (1960), a retelling of the Roland legend, was a runner-up for the Carnegie Medal, as had been The Silver Sword. As a popular children's author, Serraillier was invited to Children's Literature Summer Camps for members of the Puffin Book Club, run by Colony Holidays (predecessor to ATE Superweeks), along with other popular children's authors such as Joan Aiken and Clive King.

### Later life

In 1948, Serraillier and his wife, Anne Margaret Rogers, founded the New Windmill Series for Heinemann Educational Books. They lived and worked in an old flint cottage at Cocking near Chichester, in West Sussex. He remained a co-editor until the onset of Alzheimer's disease in the early 1990s. The illness contributed to his death on 28 November 1994, at the age of 82. They had three daughters and a son.

## Papers

The Papers of Ian Serraillier held at the University of Reading largely comprise manuscripts, typescripts, and galley proofs, including Fight for Freedom, The Clashing Rocks, The Cave of Death, Havelock the Dane, They Raced for Treasure, Flight to Adventure, and The Silver Sword. They also contain correspondence with publishers, other business and literary correspondence, notebooks with poems, ideas and story outlines, rejection letters, publishers' agreements, press cuttings, research material, lecture notes and typescripts, obituaries, etc.