Anne Fine OBE - Honorary Degree - University of Leicester

The University of Leicester has conferred the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters upon Anne Fine OBE.

Anne Fine is a children’s writer. She was born in Leicester, attended Northampton High School and studied Politics and History at the University of Warwick. She then moved to Oxford, where she worked as an Information Officer for Oxfam, before publishing her first children's book, The Summer House Loon, in 1978.

She has written more than fifty books for children, including Madame Doubtfire (which was turned into the film Mrs Doubtfire), Goggle-Eyes, The Diary of a Killer Cat, Ivan the Terrible and Flour Babies. Her books for adults include The Killjoy, In Cold Domain and Taking the Devil’s Advice.

She was Children’s Laureate from 2001 to 2003, and in this role she toured and campaigned to promote the importance of children's reading and public libraries. She compiled three poetry anthologies (A Shame to Miss, volumes 1, 2 and 3) and launched the My Home Library scheme, encouraging children to build their own libraries at home; more than 100 artists and cartoonists provided over 150 original bookplate designs for this project and there have been an estimated 1.8 million downloads of these since the project's launch in 2002.

She has won numerous literary prizes, including the Guardian Award, the Carnegie Medal (twice) and the Whitbread (now Costa) Award (twice), and she was also twice Children's Author of the Year.

Her work is translated into over forty languages. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and she was awarded an OBE in 2003 for services to children’s literature.

This film was produced by Marketing and Student Recruitment at the University of Leicester.