Robert J Kirkpatrick is a researcher and writer on boys' fiction.
He was born in Stourbridge, on 2 November 1953 and attended grammar school in Lichfield, Staffordshire.
He worked as a benefit officer for the Notting Hill Housing Trust from 1990, and wrote some best practice guides for Housing Associations.
[1] Kirkpatrick has written extensively on boy's fiction and is the Secretary of the Children's Books History Society, the British branch of the Friends of the Osborne and Lillian H. Smith Collections[2] of children's books at the Toronto Public Library.
He has contributed a whole series of thorough and detailed biographies of illustrators of children's books on the Bear Alley blog.