Bill's Christmas cat

Christmas feels like Christmas now that my friend Bill Sanderson's Christmas card has arrived.

It's exactly one year since I wrote about Bill and his remarkable artwork.

This year's is a gem, I feel.

Si some more

Mr Gnome and I are as one in our enthusiasm for the work of gifted Leeds-based artist/illustrator Simon Smith.

The image above is the first in a series of pictures to illustrate the nineteen 'Stations of the Resurrection' - a kind of 'sequel' to the traditional Stations of the Cross.

This sequence will pick out key incidents in the New Testament narrative of the events from the resurrection of Jesus to his Ascension.

In a bold step, Si has decided to interpret the story as if it were happening in Leeds in 2009.

Were Mr Gnome to pen his autobiography (literary agents, form an orderly queue, please), he would, quite naturally, invite Mr Smith to provide the illustrations

You can explore Si's work through the Proost website.

Home thoughts

I discovered the Puffin Book in which this illustration appears in the Salisbury branch of WH Smith on a wet afternoon in September 1961. I was eleven years old.

By the time we had returned home I had read the first chapter. I had also become convinced that the author had written his story with me in mind, so closely did it match my criteria of 'a good read'.

Four London children, a couple of whom seemed to be roughly my age, are separated from their parents and obliged to move to the depths of the country. Lucky them.

They haven't, as in my case, been sent away to boarding school.

As it turns out, they have fallen on their feet, fetching up in an upmarket, deliciously gothic mansion, empty save for themselves, a starchy housekeeper, some maidservants and, of course, an elderly professor.

And is if that isn't enough, they discover that the house contains a 'portal' into an even more extraordinary parallel, magical world.

After a variety of adventures the four children are rewarded amply and are crowned kings and queens of their newfound homeland - an outcome, which, unaccountably, had not yet been my fate.

The fast-paced text was interspersed by line drawings by Pauline Baynes. The image shown above was - and remains - my favourite.

This charming sitting room is, in fact inside a cave. Cosy, or what? 

A real fire, tea, cake, books and agreeable, if slightly semi-human, company.

In short, my eleven-year-old idea of heaven.

The Faun is my favourite character: domesticated, self-sufficient and what used to be called 'a confirmed bachelor'. Does he look as if he enjoys a vigorous game of rugby? I don't think so.

He's a book-lover, and happily fond of the 'wrong' kinds of food. In addition, he's hospitable, musical, kindly, yet carrying with him a slight air of melancholy. 

And, of course, he's flawed, vulnerable and not entirely what he seems. 

Hmm, Mr Lewis, what could you be thinking of?

Others told me that the book was a fable about salvation - and, yes, I 'got' the allegory.

But for me, it was, is and always will be about this extraordinary little scene and the thoughts and feelings that it so magically conjures up....

Edward Ardizzone

As a boy I was a dedicated devourer of Puffin Books. So it was only a matter of time before I fell under the spell of the illustrator Edward Ardizzone.

Ardizzone's pen-and-ink drawings, mostly black line only, manage to suggest so much through a minimalist, loose, seemingly speedy technique.

Long ago I decided I'd like to buy an orignal drawing and wrote to the artist, receiving this charming response.
I contacted his agent and bought the picture shown here. It's from The Godstone and the Blackymor, an eccentric little volume of Irish memoirs by TH (Sword in the Stone) White, long out of print.Mr Ardizzone died shortly afterwards. I am very proud to own this tiny example of his work.

Want to know more? Take a look at the Imperial War Museum's archive of Ardizzone's career as a War Artist.

Bearable

A card with a Rupert Bear illustration provoked waves of nostalgia for both Gnome and HB.

At Christmas, one hoped to receive an 'annual' (Eagle, Swift, Dandy, Beano, Sooty and Sweep) - but the uber-annual was always Rupert.

I adored them, mainly I think for the strange 'otherness' of Rupert's world: like ours, and yet so unlike. The delicate colours, the homely interiors, the weird machinery - all were enchanting. Hurrah for illustrator Alfred Bestall.

Then there was the layout. Extraordinary when you think about it. Four pictures, each with a rhyming couplet beneath. Expanded prose text at the bottom in two columns. A helpful heading at the top, plus two tiny vignette figures top right and left. So you get the narrative in three forms: pictures, couplets, prose. The pattern never varied. And I've never seen it used apart from for Rupert.