Career
She associated with Young Communist League members at the time of the Spanish Civil War (in which she lost two lovers) and eventually joined the movement. Her first job as a journalist was with the British communist daily paper The Daily Worker. Berg was influenced in her thinking by psychologist Susan Isaacs.
She also took an interest in the progressive education advocated by A. South. Neill (Summerhill), Michael Duane (Risinghill) and John Holt ("unschooling").
Berg began writing in a more realistic and gritty style, for younger children, in the 1960s, in the Nippers series of readers. This was an influential move designed to bring children"s books closer to ordinary, real, urban life, and away from the Janet and John reader style (and probably the cosiness of Enid Blyton"s world, a ubiquitous influence in the period).
As she put it: All my life I have sought to empower children (speech at the University of Essex, at an honorary degree ceremony). She was awarded the Eleanor Farjeon Award in 1974.
Leila Berg died on 17 April 2012.