Lewis Carroll

Two very strange Wonderland characters

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known for his writing pseudonym of Lewis Carroll, was educated at Richmond School in Yorkshire, Rugby School and Christ Church, Oxford.

From 1855 to 1881 he was a mathematical lecturer at Oxford, who was known for being eccentric and he was at his most comfortable when with children.

His most famous works are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and the sequel Alice Through the Looking-Glass which appeared in 1872. Lewis Carroll wrote many other nonsense poems and books, as well as mathematical works which appeared under his own name before dying in 1898 of bronchitis.

Reg Smythe

Just some of the merchandise about Reg's creation

A man who never left the North East, Reg Smythe was proud of his roots and used them as the inspiration for his world-famous cartoon, Andy Capp, a working class slacker who liked a drink and a smoke and rowed with his wife.

He left school at 14 and worked as a butcher's delivery boy, joined the Northumberland Fusiliers in 1936, submitting cartoons to Cairo magazines during the war.

He worked as a post office telephone clerk before freelancing as a cartoonist for the Daily Mirror in 1954.

He died in 1998 at the age of 81 and a fitting epitaph for Reg Smythe comes from Homer Simpson "Ah Andy Capp, you wife-beating drunk."

Pat Barker

Pat is inspired by World War 1

Pat Barker born and in Thornaby in 1943 and was brought up mainly by her grandparents. Her grandfather had fought in the First World War and became more and more haunted by it towards the end of his life.

Her grandfather's war inspired Regeneration, which was published by Viking in 1991 to critical acclaim. It was nominated by the New York Times Book Review as one of the four best novels of the year -the only novel by a British author to be so distinguished

Although she was a published author before this, Pat has been raised into the public consciousness through her trilogy First World War books, which includes Ghost Road, which won the Booker Prize.

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