Born in 1959 and brought up in Haworth, near Bradford, Yorkshire, England, Manning studied illustration and animation at the Royal College of Art, London. He has an MA RCA Master's degree in illustration and a BA (hons) degree in graphics from Newcastle Polytechnic (now Northumbria University). He devised and ran the illustration course at the Glasgow School of Art for eight years. British artist-illustrators Xavier Pick, Cathy Gale and Mark Hearld number among his ex-students. Manning's first book A Ruined House was chosen by Quentin Blake in The Laureate's Party (Red Fox) as one of his personal top 50 children's books of all time. Manning is known for his collaborations as author and co-illustrator with partner Brita Granström. Books from their young non-fiction picture book series "Wonderwise" won the TES, Silver Smarties and English Association Awards and were shortlisted for Royal Society Science Prizes (then called The Rhone Poulenc) on three occasions. They won The English Association award again in 2005 with Voices of the Rainforest and were again shortlisted in 2007 with Viking Longship. They were shortlisted again for the Royal Society Science Prize 2007 with My Body Book and in 2008 they won The English Association Award for the third time with Greek Hero. Their book Yuck! is featured in the Mike Leigh film Happy Go Lucky. A book about Charles Darwin's life, What Mr. Darwin Saw was published in 2009. Manning wrote the book My Uncle's Dunkirk. Published by Watts in association with the Imperial War Museum this book is about the Dunkirk evacuations seen from the viewpoint of Manning's Uncle, who was then a 20 year-old soldier. This follows on from Manning's book Tail End Charlie, a picture book about his father's Second World War experience as an RAF air gunner during 1944. Tail-End Charlie was shortlisted for, and televised on, the Blue Peter Book Awards 2010 and was also shortlisted for the ALCS Award. In 2010 it was nominated for the Carnegie Medal. Mick Manning often co-illustrates with his wife Brita Granström and he is a direct descendant of 18th Century Italian artist Bonifacio Musso, and his London born son Charles Muss who died in 1824 - and was himself, among many other things, an illustrator.