In honour of our centenary year, our Young Journalist students have got in touch with our alumni.
Today’s alumnus is Hilary McKay, a children’s author, who has won a Guardian’s Children’s Fiction Prize for her first novel The Exiles and the Costa Children’s Award in 2018 for her book ‘The Skylark’s War’. We managed to contact Hilary and ask her a few questions about her life during and after Boston High School.
Q - What is your favourite memory of Boston High School?
So much must have changed since I last saw the school. It’s fifty years since Hilary Damms (1H) first cycled through the gates.
I remember a lovely magnolia tree in one of the quads., the library that looked out over the front lawns, the parquet blocked corridors and the absolute thrill of the old Biology lab. Also Miss Webb, our headmistress, who was a perfectionist and minor tyrant, who never gave up on anyone, and was, when necessary, utterly kind. We were so lucky to have such a woman as head of the school.
Q - What career path did you take to get to where you are now?
After leaving BHS I went on to St Andrew’s University to study Botany and Zoology, and from then on through a mixture of casual jobs, to lab work as a chemist. However, I’ve always loved books, and I was lucky with the first children’s book I wrote because it won an award (The Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize). That was quite a big deal for a first book. It led to another contract and an American publisher, and was very much the catalyst that set me on my way.
Q - What has been the highlight of your career?
I’ve won some awards, and met some wonderful people, and it’s always nice seeing a book you’ve written in a book shop shelf. I suppose those are mini highlights, and great fun. No nicer though, than the Zoom class I took this morning, where all the ten year olds had dressed up as characters from The Skylarks’ War- the book I’d come to talk about to them.
Q - Do you have any advice for the students at Boston High School?
These are tough times. Take care of each other. See if you can get some trees planted in all that space round the back! Boston doesn’t have enough trees.
And keep reading!
- Abi, Year 13
Boston High School Newsroom