Clive King was born in Richmond, Surrey in 1924. When he was a baby his family moved to a village called Ash, near Sevenoaks in Kent, which is the setting for Stig of the Dump. He went to local schools, then King's School, Rochester and Downing College, Cambridge. During the war he served in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve and later joined the British Council. He now lives in a cottage in Norfolk, and has three children and several grandchildren.