Robert Atkinson Westall (7 October 1929 – 15 April 1993) was a British author, teacher and journalist best known for his award-winning children's fiction, although he also wrote non-fiction and specifically for adults. Many of his novels, while aimed at a teenage audience, deal with many complex, dark and in many ways adult themes. His children's fiction includes The Machine Gunners (1975), his first novel and winner of the Carnegie Medal; it was made into a BBC television serial in 1983. He won the Carnegie Medal again in 1982 for The Scarecrows, the Smarties prize in 1989 for Blitzcat and the Guardian Award in 1991 for The Kingdom by the Sea. Westall has been described at "the dean of British war novelists".

Robert Westall was born in North Shields on 7 October 1929, and grew up there on Tyneside during the Second World War. Wartime Tyneside is the setting for many of his novels, for which his own life was a great source and inspiration. He earned a Bachelor's degree in Fine Art at Durham University and a post-graduate degree studying Sculpture at the Slade School of Art in London in 1957. From 1953 until 1955, Westall served in the British Army as a Lance Corporal in the Royal Corps of Signals. He subsequently became a teacher, including holding the positions of Head of Art and Head of Careers at Sir John Deane's Grammar School, (now Sir John Deane's College) in Northwich,. Westall served as a branch director of Samaritans between 1966 and 1975 and also contributed as a journalist to publications such as Cheshire Life and The Cheshire Chronicle as well as The Guardian as an art critic.