Words and Pictures - Hardcover

Quentin Blake was born in 1932. For twenty years he taught at the royal College of Art, where he was head of the Illustration Department from 1978 until 1986. As a children s book illustrator he is internationally celebrated, most notably for his long association with roald Dahl, but has also created picture books of his own and illustrated adult classics by Dumas, Cyrano de Bergerac, Cervantes and Voltaire. He is a CBE and an Officier de l Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, and lives and works in London, Hastings and the South west of France.

Following on from our hugely successful publication of Beyond the Page, we are delighted to be publishing Words and Pictures in paperback for the first time and as a new special limited-run hardback.

Quentin Blake is one of the best-known and best-loved illustrators in the world, creating brilliant and iconic characters for, among others, Russell Hoban, Joan Aiken, Michael Rosen and, most famously, Roald Dahl. He has won numerous awards over the years, including the Whitbread Award, the Kate Greenaway Medal and the Hans Christian Andersen Award for Illustration. In 1999 he was appointed the first-ever Children's Laureate, in 2005 was created CBE and knighted in 2012.
This is the fascinating insight into Quentin Blake's work before Beyond the Page, from the start of his career until 2000. The words describe his approach to the challenges and opportunities of illustration; the pictures, chosen from fifty years of publication, show the progress from his first experience of Punch magazine to the publishing of his own picture books, such as Fantastic Daisy Artichoke. Some are familiar, such as those of Roald Dahl's Matilda or The BFG, while others are from early in his career, and some - roughs, layouts and personal drawings - will be completely new to most readers.