James Follett (not "Follet") is an author and screenwriter, born in 1939 in Tolworth, England. Follett became a full-time fiction writer in 1976, after resigning from contract work as a technical writer for the British Ministry of Defence. He has since written over 20 novels, several television plays, and many radio dramas. He is one of the 400 most popular British authors, measured by the numbers of books borrowed from public libraries in the UK.