Collection: Zeb Soanes

Zeb Soanes is a children’s author and broadcaster. He presents weekday evenings on Classic FM. For over 20 years, he was a newsreader and reassuring voice of the Shipping Forecast on BBC Radio 4. On television he was the first person to welcome viewers to BBC Four, where he also presented the BBC Proms. He has earned a reputation as ‘the go-to person for music narration’ with the UK’s leading orchestras, performing favourite works for children including Paddington’s First Concert and Peter and the Wolf. 

It was through broadcasting the BBC Radio 4 Annual Christmas Appeal that Zeb started to work with St Martin-in-the-Fields to support their work with the homeless and vulnerable. It inspired the central theme of Gaspard’s Christmas and, following a great tradition, proceeds from this book will go to the charity in perpetuity in the same way that royalties from J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan continue to support London’s Gt Ormond Street Children’s Hospital to this day.

Zeb studied Drama and Creative Writing at UEA and has written for The Observer, Country Life and The Literary Review. His best-selling first book for children, Gaspard the Fox, began a series of stories, illustrated by James Mayhew, inspired by his remarkable encounters with a real urban fox for which The Mammal Society made him their first patron.