The Two Steves
British children's writer duo
The Two Steves are British collaborative writers of children's books Steve Barlow (real name Steven Lowe) and Steve Skidmore (born 7 December 1960). They have written more than 70 books together. Their books are published as by Steve Barlow and Steve Skidmore except two Dragonriders of Bresal novels (2007 and 2008) as by Salamanda Drake.
Background
Skidmore wrote the text for at least two non-fiction picture books published in 1990.
The Two Steves began collaborating in 1987 after meeting while working at Fairham Comprehensive School in Nottingham, and have produced a large body of work together. They operate on a freelance basis, and have produced work for several publishers including Scholastic (Outernet series), and Collins (The Dark Forest series). Their first published work was a book of three short plays, "Paper Tigers" (1991) in the Oxford Playscripts series, while their first novel was "I fell in Love with a Leather Jacket" (1993). They have also written a large body of work for educational publishers, and have been series editors for Impact and High Impact (materials for struggling readers) for Heinemann, as well as series editors for Heinemann Plays and Oxford Playscripts. They have also written parody books such as "Star Bores" (2000), to coincide with the releases of popular and anticipated films. However, the bulk of their work still remains in the field of children's and teenage literature.
The public source identifies “The Two Steves” as british children's writer duo. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Steves, British and children's.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7770961. VIAF identifies the subject as 103192848. The Library of Congress control number is n2006080822. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1960, 2007, 2008 and 1990.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Two Steves” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.