Parker Cars Magazine: Issue 4

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