For the young-adult novel Stone Cold (Heinemann, 1993), which deals with homelessness, he won the annual Carnegie Medal from the CILIP, recognizing the year's outstanding children's book by a British subject.
[2] He served with the Royal Air Force and held various jobs before training as a Primary school teacher.
He first won the Red House Children's Book Award with Brother in the Land (1984), a novel set in a post-apocalyptic world.
He won three more Red House awards for Room 13 (1989), Nightmare Stairs (Short novel, 1998) and Blitzed (Younger readers, 2003).
In a 2010 by-election and in the 2011 local elections, Swindells stood as the Green Party of England and Wales candidate for the Worth Valley ward of Bradford City Council.