What's the point of illustration?

This is a question I have asked myself many times - usually halfway through an illustration job. But I do think there is a point to illustration. Or at least there can be.

I'm talking here specifically about the illustration of books. There is a school of thought that says that as children get older they need less and less illustration; that they want to read books that look more like the books adults read. Pictures are for kids. Little kids that is.

I don't think this is true. I know it wasn't true for me. Illustrations attracted me to books when I was a child and also encouraged me to read. I have already said that Charles Keeping's illustrations pulled me through Rosemary Sutcliff's dense and complex prose. I have also stated that I loved comics as a boy - and still do. Books for older children do not have to be illustrated of course - but good illustration can make a good book exceptional. But I do not think this is restricted to children.

The astonishing illustrations of Harry Clarke were the lure to first read Edgar Allen Poe (whose work I first came to via Roger Corman movies). It was the illustrated covers of secondhand Penguin Modern Classics that introduced me to F Scott Fitgerald, Kakfa, Hemingway, Camus and all the other great writers who taught me how to be a human being.

Charles Dickens offered his publisher money to stop illustrating his work and illustrations can make something appear less serious. Not everything needs illustration. But I would say that everything can be illustrated.

Getting back to children, I think that there are a couple of areas where the illustration of fiction for older children can be actually be helpful. One is historical, the other fantasy. Historical because it can help the reader picture an alien historical period that they may have little prior knowledge of (Charles Keeping was a master of this, and so is Victor Ambrus). Fantasy for similar reasons - illustrations can help the reader to make an imaginary world more concrete. Good writing can do all this unaided of course. But good writing is not harmed by good illustration. The success of Chris Riddell and Paul Stewart's books show that there is a real appetite for copiously illustrated fantasy fiction whatever the age of the reader.

Another area that benefits from illustration is horror. David Roberts work for Uncle Montague's tales of Terror is a good example as are the illustrations by Francis Mosley for M R James' ghost stories for the Folio Society (incidentally Charles Keeping also illustrated those stories). The right illustrations work a little like music in a scary movie. They get the reader in the mood. And like all illustrations - they make the book a more desirable object. They make it special.

I need a sillier name

I am still getting over the shock news that my blog is not among the 50 most influential listed by the Observer magazine today. I have figured out that I need to make a few changes. I need to move to New York (or at least to a loft), I need to be more politically controversial, have more celebrity gossip and give the blog a sillier name. I shall give it some thought.

We went to another free concert at the Fitzwilliam Museum today. Brahms (Sonata #2 in F) and Beethoven (Sonata #2) this time. Michael Wigram on the cello. Lynn Carter on the piano. It was great actually. Lovely music, beautifully played. We got there early this time and sat closer. We sat in the front row actually. So close the cellist was practically elbowing us in the face. We could hear him take great gasping breaths as he played. This is a bit of a dull sketch of it. Apologies to Lynn Carter, whose contribution to the concert is not really mirrored in my drawing.

The storyteller

I was at Heffers Bookshop in the Grafton Centre in Cambridge today, invited there by the ever-enthusiastic and helpful Kate Johnson. Heffers are so fantastically supportive of children's authors and illustrators - and not simply of those who can guarantee a queue out of the door (and therefore require no support). Both branches of Heffers in Cambridge have been very good to me, and Suzanne Jones who has organised most of the events is a star.

I have to admit, though - I was a little concerned that we might not get an audience. But I needn't have. There was a nice little group of very friendly children with their equally friendly parents. It was great actually and everything you want from a children's department in a bookshop.

I made the decision that Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror were perhaps a little too terror-filled for the age of children, most of whom were under ten, so I read a bit from Billy Wizard and asked the children what their favourite books or types of books were. I put in a bid for The Cat in the Hat as one of mine. I may bang on about Dr Seuss and his genius at a later date.

I'd brought an edition of Saki short stories with me and read The Storyteller, which went down well. I need to devote a post to Saki at some point I think. He is brilliant. I sold a few Uncle Montagues and talked about Tales of Terror from the Black Ship - and a little about how I work and what I'm writing now.

When everyone had gone I signed a pile of books for the children at St John's College School who had missed out because we ran out of books on the day. Actually the warehouse ran out of books. Bloomsbury are reprinting a couple of thousand, which is great news. And I even got a box of chocolate biscuits from Kate for coming along.

Scary pictures

One of the questions I am often asked about Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror is 'Why didn't you illustrate them yourself?'

When I first wrote the book, I did give some thought to how I would illustrate it myself. I was not entirely happy with what I came up with though. I felt quite strongly that I would have to change the way I normally work for this book and I did not want to get bogged down in the visual side of things. I wanted to ensure the writing was as good as I could get it and I wanted to make sure it was published. Everything else was secondary.

All the time I was writing the Uncle Montague/Edgar sections, I had Edward Gorey at the back of my mind. I love Gorey. I love that dark humour that you get with him and Charles Addams. Gorey was very much the tone I wanted, in both the writing of the storytelling sections and in the look of the book.

Then my wife happened to buy a copy of Ten Sorry Tales by Mick Jackson. It was very nicely illustrated by someone who obviously knew and liked Gorey as much as I did, but who had still got his own distinctive style. That illustrator was David Roberts.

Then, when I first went to see Sarah Odedina at Bloomsbury one very hot day in the summer of 2006, she handed me a copy of Ten Sorry Tales and told me that David was the illustrator she had in mind. Sarah seemed to have really understood what I was trying to do and it seemed stupid not to relax and go with the flow. It did seem like the perfect match.

And it turned out to be a very good decision. It left me free to concentrate on the stories and David did a brilliant job. He has been so enthusiastic and it shows in the work. He seems to have really enjoyed himself. Nice man too.

I had a quick email conversation with David today. He told me a very funny story about going to a school. As I mentioned in the last post - you can never tell how things are going to go. David thought the children were going to be 13 and 14 year-olds, but they were instead 6 and 7. In a scene straight out of Gorey, he said there were some frightened faces when they youngsters were presented with drawings like this one. . .

Are you sitting uncomfortably?

I went to St John's College School here in Cambridge yesterday and talked to some very well-behaved, attentive and enthusiastic children. It is impossible to predict how school visits will go, but this one was a real treat and I look forward to being invited back.

I was there all day and gave four sets of talks and readings and my voice was sounding creepier and creepier as the day went by and I got more and more hoarse.

I particularly enjoyed seeing the look of utter astonishment on the faces of the listening children as they realised that the children in Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror tend not to escape their fate. It also brought back one of those half-forgotten memories of sitting on the hard wooden school hall floor until the blood supply was cut off to your legs.

I was invited by Barbera Lonergan the librarian, and she told me that the boarders were reading the book as a very inappropriate bedtime story. It made me smile.

Devilishly.

Bad is good

Well maybe not good exactly - but certainly useful.

I was playing football on Saturday with my son and three friends and with Clive, the father of two of the other boys when Clive decided to actually tackle me like it was a proper game of football and I hit the ground with a nasty sounding crunch under my armpit. I twisted my ankle and was in some pain, but with ten year old boys looking on I held back the tears and hobbled on. I think I may have cracked a rib.

But the thing is as a writer, almost any experience adds to the stock of what you can use at a later date. Bad experiences are often more useful than good ones. It is so long since I lay on the grass after being tackled looking up at ten year old boys sillhouetted against the sky that I had forgotten how it felt: the cold earth seeping through your clothes, the desire to show enough pain for sympathy, but to bear it well enough for admiration. That will come in handy one day.

I got stung by a wasp on the way to a meeting at Random House once. I was on the tube and I felt something on my neck and then pain. I whacked the wasp to the floor and stomped on it and then waited to see whether I was going to be one of those people who are alergic and go into shock. Luckily I wasn't.

Then - about ten seconds later I thought: Now I know what it feels like to get stung by a wasp. Then I thought, 'Ow, that really hurts'. Then I thought, 'That will come in handy one day.' Then I thought 'Ow, that really hurts' again.

Visitors from the 9th Planet

My old friends Neil and Sandra came to Cambridge today. Neil Dell is a graphic designer who still works in the building in Shoreditch I used to share studio space in. I have been discussing websites with Sandra recently and who knows, I may actually get it together to create one - with her help, hopefully. They work together as 9th planet

Neil and I went for lunch and popped in to the round church of the Holy Sepulchre on the way. What a wonderful building that is. When I was at school, as part of my Art 'A' Level, we studied medieval architecture. My art teacher, Joe Taylor, would take us out in the school mini bus to look at churches and castles in Northumberland and County Durham. The enthusiasm he managed to pass on has never left me and I can get a little too excited by a nice bit of dog-tooth moulding. I am reminded here (worryingly) of Philip Larkin writing about people who 'tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were' and who are 'randy for antique.' Am I randy for antique? Possibly.

Which got me to thinking that education is a funny thing. Often it is the peripheral things that affect you the most or have the most lasting effect. One of the many things that contributed to me ending up a writer was a strand of my BA in Graphic Design/Illustration - what would now, slightly ridiculously, be called a 'module' - that was taught by the late (and I'm going to say great) David Melling who was then Dean of Humanities at Manchester Polytechnic. It was called 'The History of Ideas' - which makes me smile even now. It sums David up in a way.


The set texts were Cows, Pigs, Wars and Witches by Marvin Harris and Europe's Inner Demons by Norman Cohn - oh, and Keith Thomas' fascinating Religion and the Decline of Magic. It would be hard to sum up in a sentence what it was about but sitting in that room discussing messianic movements, Matthew Hopkins, angels, John Dee, Plato, the European Witch Craze, and goodness knows what else was a high point of my college life. Again, the fascination (if not all the detail, sadly) has stayed with me. Again David was another person who encouraged me to write.


I know a little bit about a lot of things. It is the sign of the rather undisciplined mind that attracted lots of school reports about daydreaming and lack of concentration. But I feel vindicated (almost). The great thing about being a writer (or an illustrator or graphic designer) is that general knowledge is a great thing. You never know when that strange half-remembered whatever is going to come in handy.