Bernard Ashley lives in Charlton, south east London, only a street or so from where he was born. He was educated at the Roan School, Blackheath and Sir Joseph Williamsons Mathematical School, Rochester. After National Service in the RAF Bernard trained to teach at Trent Park College of Education, specializing in Drama. He followed this with an Advanced Diploma at the Cambridge Institute and has been awarded honorary Doctorates in Education by the University of Greenwich and in letters by the University of Leicester. During his career as a teacher he worked in Kent, Hertfordshire, Newham and Greenwich, with thirty years of headships in the last three.

He is now writing full time. His first novel, The Trouble with Donovan Croft (recently re-issued by OUP), was published in 1974 and won the Other Award, an alternative to the Carnegie Medal (for which he has been shortlisted three times). Nineteen further novels have followed, gaining him a reputation as a gritty writer in sympathy with the under dog. In Margaret Meeks view he gets inside childrens heads, who say that this is what its like for them.

Of Tiger Without Teeth Philip Pullman wrote in The Guardian:
A commonplace setting, an everyday situation, ordinary characters. Bernard Ashleys great gift is to turn what seems to be low-key realism into something much stronger and more resonant. It has something to do with empathy, compassion, an undimmed thirst for decency and justice. In a way, Ashley is doing what ‘Play for Today’ used to do when TV was a medium that connected honestly with its own time, and what so few artists do now: using realism in the service of moral concern.

Johnnies Blitz (Barn Owl), drew on his wartime experiences as a child in and around London; while Little Soldier (Orchard) sums up his writing: a pacy plot with an emotional turning point, a theme that concerns him, and characters that grip as real people. It was shortlisted for the Guardian young fiction prize a