Denys Watkins-Pitchford

Denys James Watkins-Pitchford MBE (25 July 1905 – 8 September 1990) was a British naturalist, an illustrator, art teacher and a children's author under the pseudonym "BB".

He wrote under the pen name of '"BB"', a name based on the size of lead shot he used to shoot geese, but he maintained the use of his real name as that of the illustrator in all his books.

Tragedy entered his life a second time in 1974, when his wife, Cecily, became unwell after working in the garden while a farmer was spraying his fields at the other side of the hedge.

[2][3] For The Little Grey Men, published by Eyre & Spottiswoode in 1942, BB won the annual Carnegie Medal from the Library Association, recognising the year's best children's book by a British subject.

[1] Inside all his books appeared the quotation: This quote, so apt for his works, has sometimes been thought to have been another one of 'BB'’s creations but it was in fact copied from a tombstone in a north-country churchyard by his father.

In 1970, the Swiss public TV station SRG SSR adapted Bill Badger and the Pirates into an 18 part marionette children's program entitled Dominik Dachs und die Katzenpiraten, in Swiss-German dialect.