Lynne Reid Banks Lynne Reid Banks Lynne Reid Banks (born 31 July 1929) is a British author of books for children and adults. She has written forty-five books, including the best-selling children's novel "The Indian in the Cupboard", which has sold over 10 million copies and has been successfully adapted to film. Her first novel, "The L-Shaped Room", published in 1960, was an instant and lasting best seller. It was later made into a movie of the same name and led to two sequels, "The Backward Shadow" and "Two is Lonely". Banks also wrote a biography of the Brontë family, entitled "Dark Quartet",
Lynne Reid Banks and a sequel about Charlotte Brontë, "Path to the Silent Country". Banks was born in London, the only child of James and Muriel Reid Banks. She was evacuated to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, during World War II and returned after the war was over. She attended St Teresa's School Effingham in Surrey. Prior to becoming a writer, Banks was an actress, and also worked as a television journalist in Britain, one of the first women to do so. In 1962 Banks emigrated to Israel, where she taught for eight years on an Israeli kibbutz Yas'ur. In 1965 she married Chaim Stephenson