V.A. Richardson was born and brought up in the North East of England on the River Tyne near Corbridge in the late 1960s and early 1970s. He is married and lives in London with his wife, Janie, daughters Indigo and Zara, and a benign ghost left over from the late Victorian era. He also writes novels for Bloomsbury under a pen-name, Ben Bo.

After leaving school, V.A. Richardson studied at Reading University before going to University at Caen in Normandy. 'I got heavily into the art and literature of France. I’ll never forget my time spent there. I returned to London determined to be a designer and illustrator. I first made some money by designing a coin holder for £1 coins. It sold more than a million! After that I was able to set myself up designing novelties, diaries, and calendars. It was a short step from there to writing and illustrating books.'

In 1995 I had a short story published by Transworld and soon after that Barry Cunningham (then editor at Bloomsbury Children's Books) picked one of my stories out of the slush pile. The slush pile is the name publishers give to all their unsolicited manuscripts — the ones people like me send them in the hope of being published. I just kept sending in my stories and was lucky. Mind you - I did illustrate the envelope and so it must have stood out. I’ve been writing for Bloomsbury ever since.