Writer with shed loads of talent

AWARD-winning Marcus Sedgwick showed pupils at The Grammar School at Leeds that the garden shed is more than just a place to store a lawnmower.

The young adult fiction writer, shown with pupils Harin Wijayathunga and Hassan Iqbal, got his audience of Year Nine pupils involved by showing them pictures of where he works every day – a shed at the bottom of his garden – and asking them to select an object in the photo to quiz him about. Mr Sedgwick told the pupils that Star Wars served as inspiration whenever he suffered ‘writer’s block’ – like many fantasy stories it follows a standard structure for the journey of the archetypal hero. He said: “The pupils have been a delight and made my life easy as a speaker by asking good and pertinent questions.”

Famous children’s writer Roald Dahl wrote much of his works in a garden shed.