Barbara Mary Willard (12 March 1909 – 18 February 1994)[1] was a British novelist best known for children's historical fiction.
[3] Because of her family connections, Willard originally went on the stage as an actress and also worked as a playreader, but she was unsuccessful and abandoned acting in her early twenties.
She died at a nursing home in Wivelsfield Green, East Sussex, on 18 February 1994.
The Grove of Green Holly (1967), which was a story about a group of 17th century travelling players who were hiding in a forest in Sussex from Oliver Cromwell's soldiers, spawned[3] her most famous work, the Mantlemass series (1970–1981) including her Guardian Prize-winning book.
In the introduction to the book, Christopher Robin Milne notes that Willard had moved from her home on the Sussex Downs to the edge of Ashdown Forest in 1956 and that her new surroundings had provided the inspiration and setting for ten of her children's historical novels (eight in the Mantlemass series and two others).