5 things to know about Quentin Blake

For more than 60 years Blake’s familiar flowing illustrations have brought some of the nation’s most-loved children’s books to life, from his own character creations such as Mrs Armitage and Mister Magnolia, to enriching the stories of Roald Dahl, Dr Seuss and Nils-Olof Franzén.

So, who better to help us in our celebrations of 75 years of the Royal Festival Hall and the Southbank Centre? From now until November, across our buildings you’ll be able to see a number of original illustrations by Blake in The Southbank Parade. From concert musicians to concrete skaters, Blake’s specially created characters celebrate the artists and Londoners of all backgrounds who stop by our bit of the city every single day. 

As the first of these characters was being added to our walls, we caught up with Blake to ask him about his enduring love of drawing, and a few more things besides, so here are five things you might not know about the man whose illustrations undoubtedly accompanied your childhood.

He’s been illustrating for more than eight decades

Blake was born in Sidcup, Kent, in 1932 and, as he tells us, ‘I have been drawing for as long as I can remember’. What began as a hobby has grown into a career that continues even now, in his nineties, and still evidently offers Blake much enjoyment. And it’s the joy of drawing in particular that Blake is keen to champion; ‘My belief, right or wrong, is that children start out naturally trying to write and draw and that children should keep drawing for both the pleasure of it and for what they might discover as they do so.’

Illustration’s gain was teaching’s (and possibly acting’s) loss

A testament to the notion that ‘if you can see it, you can be it’, the young Blake deemed a career as an artist possible, thanks to a key interaction during his time at Chislehurst and Sidcup Grammar School. ‘The husband of my Latin teacher was both a professional cartoonist and a painter, so I had him as an example,’ he explains. ‘But I think I must have always wanted to be a professional [illustrator and artist] because I was submitting drawings to Punch when I was still at school. The first one was published when I was just 16.’

That’s not to say that he didn’t have a back-up option, as he explains. ‘If I hadn’t succeeded as an artist I would’ve been a teacher of English which, properly speaking, is the only thing I’m qualified to do. I like the theatre but I couldn’t have become an actor. For me, illustration is a form of acting and taking on various parts, and fortunately you don’t have to learn the words!’

When it comes to his many much-loved characters, he doesn’t have a favourite

Blake illustrated his first book in 1961 – Evan Hunter’s The Wonderful Button – and has since gone on to illustrate well over 300 other titles, including 35 of his own. As a result, for generations of people, just a mention of the name ‘Quentin Blake’ will be enough to trigger a memory of one of his much-loved character illustrations.

Perhaps it’s the BFG with his gentle face and over-sized ears, or Mr Twit with all that nasty stuff lurking in his beard, or the extra long snapping jaws of The Enormous Crocodile. They’re a comforting reminder of childhood, and whilst we’ve all got our favourites, Blake himself is a little less nostalgic, preferring instead to focus on the present. ‘I don’t think I have a favourite character,’ he tells us, ‘my favourite character is the one that I am drawing at that moment’.

His illustrations stretch well beyond the page

It’s not just in the pages of well-worn children’s books that you’ll find the work of Quentin Blake. His familiar illustration-style has also graced stamps, greeting cards, and, increasingly, buildings. Since 2006 Blake has produced a huge number of illustrations for public display in hospitals and health care settings in the UK and France, while in 2007 he produced a huge five-stories high illustration which wrapped around a building outside London’s St Pancras, welcoming visitors to the city. And, as we mentioned, his latest set of public illustrations can now be found in and around the Southbank Centre.

‘Of course in many ways they are very similar,’ says Blake of the processes of illustrating for books and creating mural work, ‘but the essence of book illustration is that you are dealing with a sequence of moments over a period of time, so you get to draw your characters in an assortment of expressive moods and gestures’.

The Southbank Parade isn’t his first interaction with us

Not only does The Southbank Parade mark 75 years since the opening of our Royal Festival Hall, it also marks 75 years since Blake himself made his first visit here. Back in 1951, a then 17-year-old Blake was living in suburban south-east London when he travelled into the city to visit the Festival of Britain site here on the South Bank, for which our Royal Festival Hall was built. ‘I remember the Dome of Discovery and the Skylon,’ says Blake of his time spent at the Festival, ‘but I think I was most interested in the exhibitions by English painters Graham Sutherland and Keith Vaughan’.

Not that we’ve not seen each other in the seven and a half decades since. Blake and his work have made several appearances at the Southbank Centre over the years. This includes the Little Angel Marionette Theatre presenting a puppet adaptation of his story Angelo in our Purcell Room in 1974; an appearance by Blake at our Imagine festival in 2014 in conversation with Nicolette Jones, and a return later that same year with fellow illustrator Oliver Jeffers; and, earlier this year, a hugely popular adaptation of his much-loved story Mrs Armitage on Wheels.