Jonathan Brough

Jonathan has just come to the end of a thirty-year teaching career, the final twenty of which were spent as the teaching head of three different primary schools. Jonathan taught across the curriculum and age-range but is particularly passionate about English, Drama and History. Since retiring, he has relocated to Northumberland to focus on writing but is often to be found in schools as an educational consultant. He loves popping back into classrooms, playgrounds and staffrooms to help out whenever he can!

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Jonathan has always believed that the single defining factor that leads to success in school is a love of reading. Young readers therefore deserve rewarding texts that they enjoy reading and that feature characters like themselves. A real champion of diversity in education, Jonathan was a governor of  London’s first, and still foremost, specialist school for children with dyslexia and dyspraxia for over a decade, and as a Head he facilitated school places for pupils with particular needs at a time when no comparable primary setting nearby was prepared to do so. 

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Jonathan’s experience has shaped his understanding of the modern primary school curriculum and his appreciation of the need for accessible and well-written pieces of literature that reflect the experiences and backgrounds of all young people. For example, family responsibilities and twentieth-century history underpin his middle-grade title The Antiquities of Amalthea Academy. Furthermore, Jonathan’s determination to cast narratives with diverse young people who endeavour to find their place in the world is shown in his work for older readers, Cottingley Beck, which features an openly gay protagonist and an initial antagonist who becomes much happier with his existence once he is able to be honest with himself about his sexuality.

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Jonathan enjoys travelling and visiting schools, so is very happy to venture across the UK to deliver events and talk to young readers.