Roger Mcgough - Children's Author

Award-winning poet, playwright, broadcaster and children's author Roger McGough was born on 9 November 1937 in Liverpool, England. He was educated at St Mary's College, Crosby, Liverpool, and at Hull University. He taught at St Kevin's Comprehensive School, Kirby, and lectured at Mabel Fletcher College in Liverpool and at the Liverpool College of Art. He was a member of the pop music/poetry group 'The Scaffold' between 1963 and 1973. He made his name as one of the 'Liverpool Poets' with Adrian Henri and Brian Patten, included in The Mersey Sound: Penguin Modern Poets 10 (1967). A Fellow of John Moores University in Liverpool, he won a Cholmondeley Award in 1999 and was awarded an honorary MA from Nene College of Further Education. He was Fellow of Poetry at the University of Loughborough (1973-5), Honorary Professor at Thames Valley University (1993) and is a member of the Executive Council of the Poetry Society. He was awarded an OBE in 1997.

He has twice won the Signal Poetry Award: first in 1984 with Sky in the Pie, then again in 1999 for Bad, Bad Cats. He is also the author of a number of plays, including All the Trimmings, first performed at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, in 1980, and The Mouthtrap, which he wrote with Brian Patten, produced at the Edinburgh Festival in 1982. He wrote the lyrics for an adaptation of The Wind in the Willows first staged in Washington, DC, in 1984, transferring to Broadway in 1995. He has written for and presented programmes on BBC Radio including 'Poetry Please' and 'Home Truths'. His film work includes Kurt, Mungo, BP and Me (1984), for which he won a BAFTA award, and he won the Royal Television Society Award for his science programme The Elements (1993).

His most recent book of poetry is Everyday Eclipses (2002). His Collected Poems, bringing together over forty years of McGough's poetry, was published in 2003, and his live poetry album, Lively, is now out on CD.

Author photo: Leila Romaya.

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Featured Books, with extracts by Roger Mcgough

Dotty Inventions And Some Real Ones Too
Roger Mcgough
May 2012 Book of the Month.  Best-selling poet Roger McGough hits some real Eureka! moments in this cheerfully wacky picture book full of fabulously ingenious inventions. Professor Dotty Dabble is a great inventor so is sure she’ll win the National...
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Format: Paperback - Released: 03/05/2012
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Lucky
Roger Mcgough
5+. A fabulous collection of poems from one of the UK's best-loved poets. Deliciously witty, each of the fifty poems is a little firecracker of delight delivering knowledge and insights in a light and humorous way. Many are about animals...
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Format: Paperback - Released: 03/05/2012
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An Imaginary Menagerie
Roger Mcgough
Age 5+. A Lovereading4kids 'Great Read' you may have missed 2011 selection. Reviewed and selected by our poetry expert, Liam Parkin: Roger McGough is one of the most well-liked and revered poets we have today and his children’s poetry is always imaginative...
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Format: Paperback - Released: 05/05/2011
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You Have Been Warned!
Roger Mcgough
Age 7+. A deliciously macabre collection of cautionary poems in which gruesome and grisly children are taught the errors of their ways. McGough’s own poem ‘Cautionary Tales’ entertainingly describes the fate that befalls Josephine whose lack of application at school...
Featured in: 7+ readers | Poetry
Format: Hardback - Released: 07/08/2008
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Selected Poems
Roger Mcgough
This work is an updated selection of Roger McGough's finest, best-loved verse. The complete span of McGough's writing, from the 1960s to the new millennium, is represented.
Featured in: 11+ readers | eBooks
Format: Paperback - Released: 02/02/2006
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100 Best Poems For Children
Roger Mcgough
Age 7+ 100s of poems chosen by school children all around the UK was the starting point for this collection. Roger McGough then paired the list down to just 100 contemporary and classic poems. January 2011 Guest Editor Jenny Downham: "I had...
Featured in: 7+ readers | Poetry
Format: Paperback - Released: 03/10/2002
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