38 where to, parker?
quentin blake his nibs Sir Quentin Blake has spent a lifetime illustrating for children’s books, most famously in collaboration with Roald Dahl. Here he explains to Dominic Bliss his enduring appeal. photo: Sean Dempsey/PA Images Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, the BFG, Danny the Champion of the World, Mathilda, Fantastic Mr Fox… Roald Dahl created some of the most memorable characters in children’s fiction. As well as through his novels, they have been brought to life, often immortalised, across the media of film, theatre, radio, audio books, and lots and lots of merchandising. But it’s surely thanks to the drawings of Quentin Blake that they are most fondly remembered. Those scratchy, shaky, seemingly effortless drawings, often looking half-finished, but always brilliantly animated, have ignited the imaginations of children all over the world (Dahl’s work has been translated into 58 languages), especially since Blake illustrated his first Dahl book, The Enormous Crocodile, back in 1978. “There’s a lot of movement and activity in them which seems to go on working for children,” Blake explains to this magazine when asked the reasons for the enduring appeal. “It seems to be a language they respond to. It’s like a drawing happening in front of them as they watch. Someone once said to me: ‘It’s very astute of you to assume that style.’ But I didn’t. It’s just a kind of handwriting for me.” Blake, now 83 years old, has illustrated a score or so of the great man’s books but also other children’s fiction by the likes of Dr. Seuss, David Walliams, and, this year, a newly discovered Beatrix Potter story called The Tale of Kitty-in-Boots. He has written and illustrated dozens of his own books, too. In 1999 he was appointed the first ever Children’s Laureate. Three years ago he was knighted. Inevitably, much praise has been heaped upon him. Consider this tribute in the Daily Telegraph: “Blake is beyond brilliant. He is anarchic, moral, infinitely subversive, sometimes vicious, socially acute, sparse when he has to be, exuberantly lavish in the details when he feels like it. He can tell wonderful stories without a single word, but his partnership with Roald Dahl was made in heaven. Or somewhere. The diabolic ingenuity of Dahl came where to, parker? 39