Penelope Lively has written many books written for children including Astercote, The Whispering Knights, The Ghost of Thomas Kempe, which won the Carnegie Medal, and A Stitch in Time, which won the Whitbread Children's Book Award.

Two of her novels written for adults have been shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction, and she won it in 1987 with Moon Tiger. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a member of PEN and a former Chairman of The Society of Authors. She was awarded an OBE in 1989 and a CBE in 2001.