Stephen Potts

Stephen Potts is a British author of children's books, particularly historical adventure novels set at sea. Potts was born in 1957 in Norwich, England, to an English father then serving in the Royal Navy, and an Irish mother. He started school in northern Scotland, and continued in various parts of England, before entering Corpus Christi College, Cambridge to study medical sciences. He subsequently transferred to Magdalen College, Oxford to study clinical medicine, and while there rowed for Oxford University (Isis) in the 1981 Boat Race. He continued medical studies in the United States, before returning to London and then Edinburgh to specialize in psychiatry. He works part-time as a Consultant in Liaison Psychiatry in Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, mainly in the emergency department and renal transplant unit. He took up writing for children in the 1990s, beginning with a loosely connected trilogy collectively known as The Running Tide. The three books cover the period from the mid 19th century to the present day, and are variously set in Britain, Greenland and the Aleutian islands. In March 2007 he was commissioned by Dynamic Entertainment DEH, a Dutch independent film production company, to adapt Philip Pullman's 1992 novel The Butterfly Tattoo (previously published as The White Mercedes) as a feature film, due for release in 2008.