Jim Downer is a retired exhibition designer, who conceived and illustrated Timmy the Tug as a young man fresh from art college in Leeds. He has always had a great love of the sea and now lives on the Isle of Wight, England. Ted Hughes (1930-1998) was an English poet and children's writer. He was the Poet Laureate from 1984 until his death in 1998, and is routinely ranked as one of the best poets of his generation. Hughes published many books and poems for children, including The Iron Man, The Iron Woman and How the Whale Became.