Quentin Blake

Quentin Blake will be familiar to many as the illustrator who brought Roald Dahl’s characters to life. In a seven-decade career he has worked with more than 80 authors, written or illustrated over 500 books, and received numerous accolades, including becoming the first Children’s Laureate, receiving a knighthood, and being named ‘Companion of Honour’ in the Queen’s 2022 Birthday Honours List....

Born in London in 1932 and educated at Chislehurst and Sidcup Grammar School, Blake made his first foray into publishing aged just 16 when Punch reproduced some of his drawings. While completing his National Service, studying English at Downing College, Cambridge and qualifying as a teacher occupied his early adulthood, he continued to draw for magazines, with contributions to The Spectator and more for Punch, and attended classes at Chelsea Art School.

It was 1960 before Blake stepped into children’s illustrations, with his schoolfriend John Yeoman’s collection of animal fables, A Drink of Water, providing a wealth of ideas for him to work with. The pair formed the most enduring and prolific of Blake’s collaborations, with popular titles including the anarchic series focusing on Old Mother Hubbard’s Dog.

In the late 1960s Blake turned his hand to writing children’s stories, with Patrick the first to be published. Of the almost 40 books he penned Mister Magnolia won the Kate Greenaway Medal in 1980 and ten years later All Join In received the Kurt Maschler Award for integrated text and illustration.

Blake’s famed partnership with Roald Dahl began with The Enormous Crocodile. Published in 1978 – the same year in which Blake became Head of the Illustration Department at the Royal College of Art – it marked the start of a relationship that would last until Dahl’s death in 1990 and which saw a seemingly perfect match of wits. Blake illustrated all of Dahl’s books apart from The Minpins and has declared The BFG to be his favourite.

Alongside his work on books, Blake took on the role of exhibition curator in the 1990s, with shows at the National Gallery, the British Library and the Musée du Petit Palais, and in 2002 founded the House of Illustration. Now named the Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration it is the UK’s only public arts organization dedicated to the artform; it is scheduled to move to London in 2025 and, in addition to exhibition and educational spaces, will become a permanent home for Blake’s extensive archive.