He may be known best for the first of two children's novels based on Greek mythology, written with Leon Garfield, illustrated by Charles Keeping, and published by Longman in 1970.
For The God Beneath the Sea Blishen and Garfield won the 1970 Carnegie Medal from the Library Association, recognising the year's best children's book by a British subject.
[1] There is also his series of autobiographical books, including A Cack-Handed War (1972), a story describing his experiences as a conscientious objector, set against the backdrop of the Second World War, and Roaring Boys (1955), an honest account of teaching in a London secondary modern school in the 1950s, a book still valuable to understand teaching in a "rough" part of a city.
But having read some of the now-famous books revealing the horrors of the First World War, the younger Blishen realised: "I can't be somebody who does that to someone else."
Fans of Roaring Boys and its sequel, This Right Soft Lot, ranged from the novelist Kingsley Amis to former Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock.