BBC7

Chris d'Lacey has been writing children's books for 10 years. Pigeons are one of his greatest loves and so his first two books are about an injured pigeon Fly, Cherokee, Fly.

Chris's other love [apart from his wife Jay] is football and this appears in another of his children's books Falling 4 Mandy. This story tackles the subject of first girlfriends which is also one of the themes in Horace a book about a boy who finds a valuable antique bear in a charity shop. Chris came up with the idea for Horacewhen he himself bought an old teddy bear in a charity shop for 50p. This bear was not a valuable antique and looked a little threadbear so Chris called him 'Fredbear', or Fred for short!

Chris works at Leicester University and describes himself as a 'scientist of sorts'. He works with a machine called a confocal microscope, which takes pictures of microscopic specimens. One of the high points of his life was an episode of The X-Files when the machine got a mention from Agent Scully!

His ambitions are to fly in a space shuttle and own a really good racehorse.