Richard Platt

The Cross-Section series on which Richard worked with illustrator Stephen Biesty sold more than two million copies. Pirate Diary (Walker Books) awarded a silver in the Smarties prize last year, and its predecessor, Castle Diary was shortlisted for the prestigious Kurt Maschler award, for the TES award, and the History Today award. Richard has recently acted as consultant for Meridian TV on a series of six programmes about smuggling, appearing in several of them. He was also a consultant on the film Pirates of the Caribbean 2 starring Johnny Depp. He has written general-interest articles on topics as diverse as management and witchcraft and contributed to books for a wide variety of publishers, including Cassells, Dorling Kindersley, Harper Collins, Haymarket, Octopus, Reader's Digest and others.