Ruth Tomalin (1919, Piltown, County Kilkenny, Ireland – 22 November 2012, Eastbourne) was a British journalist, novelist, and children's author.
[1] Ruth Tomalin grew up in West Sussex on the Stansted Park estate, where her father was head gardener.
She was educated at Chichester High School, Sussex, and then at King's College London, where she received her diploma of journalism in 1939.
[1][2] Ruth Tomalin's work falls into two distinct categories.
There is also a group of novels concerned with the childhood and youth of Ralph Oliver and latterly his young cousin Rowan — The Garden House, The Spring House, and Away to the West: these are longer and far more exacting works, so difficult to classify that in the judgement of some critics they are adult novels and cannot be regarded as children's books at all.