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Below you’ll find interviews and information on Ladybird Book artists, writers and other figures significant in the Ladybird story. You’ll find a broader overview here.
This is the story of why I have a portrait of a very serious, elderly stranger in prime position in my Ladybird bookroom – and why I am proud to be his guardian. Are you sitting comfortably? A long time…
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“Mum and Dad and Ladybird books” Ina and Jack Havenhand wrote the popular ‘People at Work’ series of Ladybird books, which were published between 1961 and 1973. The following was written for me by their son, Barry. “This note is…
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Coincidences – really nice ones – abound in Ladybird Land. I don’t know why and perhaps I don’t want to know why, in case the magic one day stops. But last week I heard of a really special coincidence –…
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I love the original classroom posters that you can still occasionally find right at the back of school cupboards. Made to support the 1960s Peter and Jane Key Words reading scheme, they were the interactive whiteboard of their day. Collector…
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… in the form of an 11-minute interview Yesterday the latest showing of my exhibition ‘The Wonderful World of the Ladybird Book Artists’ opened at the Victoria Gallery in Bath. Just before it opened I was interviewed by a local…
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If you have been following the story, you know that the special M.O.D- commissioned Ladybird book is the holy grail of Ladybird book collecting – a book thought to exist but which has never been seen. The story so far…
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Jane – fictional heroine of the Peter and Jane reading scheme books – was my role model, growing up. In some ways we had a great deal in common: we were both born in the mid-1960s, we both had one…
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You can normally judge a vintage Ladybird by its cover. For many years the standard approach was to use an illustration from inside the book on the cover. But some Ladybird books really under-sold themselves on the shelf. This is…
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Wild flowers and garden flowers. You’d think the skills required to illustate one book or the other would be much the same – but that’s not how one artist saw it. ‘British Wild Flowers’ (1957) is one of the best-loved…
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The following is the text of a brochure created to accompany an exhibition of Harry Wingfield’s Ladybird illustrations, held at the New Art Gallery, Walsall, Feb 1st – 17th March 2002
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