He attended Marlborough College and worked on a farm for a year before serving in the British Army’s elite Grenadier Guards during World War II. The son of a paper mill director, he was born March 27, 1922, in Bitton, Gloucestershire, England, where his early life revolved around pet rabbits, tortoises, rats and mice. King-Smith’s 2001 autobiography is titled “Chewing the Cud: An Extraordinary Life Remembered by the Author of Babe, the Gallant Pig,” and was described by one British reviewer as being “as much a memoir of the animals he has known and loved as of the people closest to him.” White’s, sustained by his own inimitable wry sense of humor.” In his review of King-Smith’s book “Pigs Might Fly,” published in “Children’s Literature in Education,” Arthur Arnold observed: “King-Smith’s writing stands comfortably alongside the more celebrated E.B. “I allow them some human ones, especially speech, because it is such fun putting words into their mouths,” he once said. Writing in longhand in the morning and then typing it up with one finger on an old portable typewriter in the afternoon, he created animal characters that were known for displaying human characteristics while retaining their animal traits.

The film was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including best picture, and won an Oscar for best visual effects.ĭescribed in the Guardian of London in 1996 as “a genial character - a witty, urbane countryman of entertainingly contradictory enthusiasm,” King-Smith did his writing in the small study of his 17th century cottage a few miles from where he was born. “But I knew within minutes of taking my seat in the cinema I would not be disappointed.

“Obviously, I was nervous and a bit worried in case the adaptation messed up the original story in any way,” he said in the Daily Telegraph interview. King-Smith, who sold the movie rights to “The Sheep-Pig” to Australian writer-producer George Miller shortly after it was published, was a fan of the Chris Noonan-directed movie. “I like pigs as friends and for their intelligence. “It’s something I may have to see my psychiatrist about but, yes, I have a real soft spot for pigs,” he told the Daily Telegraph of Sydney, Australia, in 1996.

The author, who tapped his years of working with farm animals for his writing, had an affinity for pigs - despite a fondness for eating bacon. “If I might ask a great favor of you, could you all please be kind enough to walk down to that gate where the farmer is standing, and to go through it? Take your time, please, there’s absolutely no rush.” Trained to herd sheep by Fly, the polite Babe puts his own spin on getting sheep to obey.

Babe by Dick King-Smith