The Year of the Child

Bel Mooney (born 1946) is an English journalist and broadcaster born in Liverpool, and spent her earliest years in Liverpool on a council estate. Mooney became a journalist in 1969 then went on to write for the New Statesman, the Daily Telegraph Magazine, Cosmopolitan and many others. She was a columnist on the Daily Mirror, The Times and The Sunday Times. She has honorary degrees from the University of Bath and Liverpool John Moores University, and is a Fellow of University College London. 'Devout Sceptics' (BBC Radio 4) won a Sandford St Martin Trust award for religious broadcasting, and the children's novel The Voices of Silence won a New York Public Library citation and was shortlisted for a Gold Medal in the State of California. She has won special awards for journalism from charities including CRUSE. Mooney is also Patron of Teenage Cancer Trust (South West) and National Family Mediation.Having made her name as a journalist, columnist, and broadcaster, she turned her hand to writing fiction for adults and children. In all, she published 26 books for children and young people. Her fiction (adults and children) has been translated into eleven languages. Mooney has reviewed fiction and non-fiction for many newspapers including the Spectator, the Observer, The Times and the Times Literary Supplement. She has been a judge for the Whitbread (now Costa) Book of the Year and The Orange Prize.