Michael Foreman (author/illustrator)

He was born and grew up in Pakefield, near Lowestoft, Suffolk, where his mother kept the village shop.[5][6] His father died a month before he was born.[7] At the age of three, the family home was hit by an enemy bomb, but he survived along with his mother and two older brothers.[8] He studied at Lowestoft School of Art, and later in London at the Royal College of Art,[9] where he won a scholarship to the United States.

Foreman learned to respond instantly to text as an art student.[10] Having drawn for the newspapers and for the police, drawing female suspects when Identikit only catered for men, he gained valuable drawing experience. A travel scholarship took him all around the world, drawing landscapes, architecture and wildlife. Although many of his books feature luminous watercolours, it is the drawing that he sees as vital: "It's all in the drawing and illustration. It's a question of creating another world, believable in its own right. I think I was very lucky to have started art school so young when they actually taught Art. It was a rigorous training - not just painting and drawing from life - but hours of anatomy and perspective. ... it really taught you to understand what you were looking at."[10] His aim in illustration is to make the worlds created believable, real: "I keep trying to make things more real, not in a literal photographic sense, but in an emotional sense, telling a story by capturing the essence of the situation, giving it some meaning."[10]

• Michael Foreman at British Council: Literature
• Michael Foreman at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Michael Foreman at IMDb
• Michael Foreman at March House Books (dealer), a long list of books with preface
• Michael Foreman at Library of Congress Authorities, with 159 catalogue records