Philip Reeve

Biography

Born on 28 February 1966 in Brighton, and now living in Dartmoor National Park (UK), Reeve studied illustration, first at Cambridgeshire College of Arts and Technology (CCAT – now Anglia Ruskin University), where he contributed a comic strip to the Student Union magazine, and later at Brighton Polytechnic (now the University of Brighton). Before becoming a professional illustrator he worked at a bookshop in Brighton for several years. During his student years and for a few years afterwards he wrote for and performed in comedy sketch shows with a variety of collaborators under various group names, among them The Charles Atlas Sisters.

With Brian Mitchell, Reeve is the author of a 1998 dystopian comic musical,The Ministry of Biscuits. 'Stop! Think before you eat that biscuit! Is it in any way fancy? If so, then you are a criminal! In Post-War London, The Ministry of Biscuits casts its sinister shadow over every tea-time and elevenses in the land. Established to 'control biscuits, and to control the idea of biscuits,' it prohibits decadent sweetmeats, such as the Gypsy Cream.'

The musical was performed at the Pavilion Theatre, Brighton, the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford, and at the 1999 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. It was revived in 2005 at the Sallis Benney, Brighton, and is due to be revived again in November 2017.

Reeve provided cartoons for many books including those in the Horrible Histories and the Murderous Maths series and wrote the Buster Bayliss series series of books for young readers, which currently includes Night of the Living Veg, The Big Freeze, Day of the Hamster, and Custardfinger. He is also the author and illustrator of a Dead Famous book, Horatio Nelson and His Victory.

His first book for older readers was Mortal Engines which won the Nestlé Smarties Book Prize in ages category 9–11 years and made the Whitbread Book Award shortlist. Mortal Engines is the first book in a series sometimes called the Mortal Engines Quartet (2001 to 2006), which also includes Predator's Gold, Infernal Devices and A Darkling Plain. The books feature two young adventurers, Tom Natsworthy and Hester Shaw, who live in a lawless post-apocalyptic world inhabited by moving cities. For the concluding volume, Reeve won the 2006 Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, a once-in-a-lifetime book award judged by a panel of British children's writers.

Reeve spent more than ten years on Mortal Engines. He started coming up with ideas for the book in 1989 or 1990 and it was published in 2001. He was working on it part-time, between illustration jobs. Knowing he could complete such a project, he then cut down on his illustration work and devoted more time to writing.

The 2007 novel Here Lies Arthur is an alternative version of the Arthurian legend. Reeve and Arthur won the annual Carnegie Medal from the British librarians, recognising the year's best children's book published in the UK

The Larklight trilogy (2006 to 2008) is steampunk set in outer space. The first book Larklight was under development as a film by the Indian director Shekhar Kapur, but he is no longer attached. Reeve himself professes that, when planning out stories for his novels, "I see it as a film that I run in my head, and I just keep running alternative versions of it until I come up with a cut I like. The future of the film is in the new hands of Swedish director Tomas Alfredson.

Reeve inaugurated a series of Mortal Engines prequels with Fever Crumb (Scholastic UK, 2009). The first one was one of eight finalists for the 2010 Carnegie Medal.

Writing methods

Reeve claims not to be a methodical writer. He does not plan anything at all, usually starting with an opening image, a closing image, and a few vague notions for the things that happen in between. This leads to thousands of words of rough draft material being abandoned – even entire novels, such as with Fever Crumb and Mortal Engines. He does, however take ideas from these abandoned drafts to build the final version. It usually takes him a year to get a novel from first idea to publication, six months of which are spent actively writing it. The rest of the time is spent on editing and thinking.

Mortal Engines Universe

The Mortal Engines series is called the "Hungry City Chronicles" in the United States.

Buster Bayliss series

Larklight trilogy

Goblins series

The Railhead Series

Other novels

Reeve & McIntyre Production Series

Books written together with, and illustrated by Sarah McIntyre
US series title: Not-So-Impossible Tale Series

As illustrator