Julia Golding is the author of the award-winning Cat Royal and Girl on the Run series. Julia Golding read English at Cambridge before completing a doctorate in Literature of the Romantic Period at Oxford. Her other careers have been many and varied: a diplomat - which took her from the high point of town twinning in the Tatra Mountains to the low of inspecting the bottom of a Silesian coal mine; a pea-picker, an office temp, an Oxfam policy adviser and latterly as a freelance writer living in Oxford. Through her books for children she has won the Nestle Children's Book Prize, the Waterstone's Children's Book Prize and been shortlisted for the Costa Children's Book Award.