Who are the nicest and most obnoxious authors you've met ?

[RFKHumphreyObama]

35. Nicest -Nina Bawden, John Dean, Andrew Wilkie

Nina Bawden was a British children's author probably not well known in the US but she wrote books for children over several decades. She visited my school in the late 1980s and was just a really nice, sweet, kind woman and I'll never forget the warm smile she gave me as she signed an autograph woman. Her books were good as well. Tragically, she died just last month

John Dean was the former Nixon White House aide jailed for Watergate who then turned into an author. I met him at after he gave a talk while visiting Australia. Very friendly and warm.

Andrew Wilkie won't be known to American audiences predominantly but he is a former intelligence officer who resigned and turned whistleblower in response to Australia's involvement in the Iraq War. He subsequently became a politician. I met him at a book signing and he was very amiable and, despite the fact that he was in a hurry and had a lot of books to get through, he answered my questions in depth and was very nice

In terms of being obnoxious, I wouldn't classify Roald Dahl in that category but he was very eccentric and his behavior was slightly off-putting when he visited our school in the late 1980s. He initially refused to give a talk to the junior school students at our school and only wanted to have an audience with the senior students at our school (thankfully our headmistress talked him out of that or I would never have seen him). Then when he spoke to our school assembly, he was very witty and entertaining but he was also slightly impatient with us and got annoyed when we laughed either too loudly or too long at one of his jokes. And, traditionally authors who came and visited our school allowed children to come up to them and have their books signed. But Roald Dahl declined to allow us to do that (although he did sign his books in our school library)

At the time I thought he was a bit obnoxious. With the benefit of hindsight and maturity, I'm inclined to be a lot more generous to him. He was about 70 at the time and it was just two years before his death. I can imagine that interacting with a bunch of young and over-hyped kids might not be the most pleasant of experiences. And, whatever my grievances with him, it was still a remarkable privilege and a pleasure to be able to see such a great author in person and that to me outweighs anything negative about my impressions of him