Quentin Blake

Presenter0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Presenter0:08

The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand six.

Presenter0:27

My castaway this week is artist and writer Quentin Blake.

Presenter0:31

For more than fifty years his work as an illustrator has brought to life the characters and fantastical happenings in some of our most treasured children's books. His style is in itself almost a definition of childhood exuberant, subversive, chaotic, and spirited drawings with a degree of innocent optimism that can be almost painfully touching, but never sickly sweet.

Presenter0:54

Quentin Blake, it's almost impossible to imagine books like James and the Giant Peach or The B F G without the drawings that seem to have sprung from your pen. Uh is it is it a pen you use when you're drawing?

Quentin Blake1:07

It's mostly a pen I use. I use an assortment of things. What I like best is a scratchy pen. It's it's an old-fashioned writing pen, and it's called a waverly nib. And you can feel it when you're drawing. You know, you can feel the shapes that you're making. That's what I mostly use, but I mean, as I get older and do it more often, I sometimes use reed pens or I use a quill. A few years ago I was given a vulture's wing feather, and I thought this would make a marvellous quill. So I cut it and drew vultures with it. And since then, I've been getting parrots' feathers to draw parrots with, and swans' feathers to draw swans with. But they're wonderfully scratchy things. And the fact that they're

Quentin Blake1:49

a little bit unreliable and you're not quite sure what they're going to do. That makes it

Quentin Blake1:54

More exciting. You've got to be on your toes. I read once that you drew something with a boots toothpick. I presume that's not true. Oh, no, that's absolutely true. Yes. No, no, th I'd forgotten about that. It's before I knew about quills. It was the first punch cover that I ever did, but that was before I discovered the joys of real quills.

Presenter2:12

From Real Birds. Have you always drawn? Is there a sense in which you're sort of compelled from some sort of inward force to get it out on paper?

Quentin Blake2:19

I suppose so. I mean, with hindsight. I mean, when I was a small boy, I just used to draw because I liked doing funny drawings. You know, and I didn't think.

Quentin Blake2:27

that it was drawing or drawing was a special activity. And then it was later on that I realized that what I really liked was drawing. I mean jokes were fine, you know, kind of thing. But what I really liked was drawing the things in the pictures.

Presenter2:40

Looking at your pictures, there's a sense that they've almost run onto the page and slapped themselves on there, that that's where they've stopped. There's a lot of energy. So so were you a little boy with a lot of hijinks? Was there mischief in you?

Quentin Blake2:51

No, this is vicarious. I mean, this is this is instead, you know, I mean the the pictures are full of people running about and jumping and dancing, something I do very badly indeed if I ever do it. And no, it it I can imagine those things happening and I actually kind of mime them when I'm drawing them. And I know I mean I've been told I make the faces of the people in the pictures, but it's not what I actually do in life. It's it's I can do it in drawings, but I don't expect me to be doing anything too energetic.

Presenter3:21

We're going to talk in a minute a bit more, I hope, about the little Quentin Saxby Blake. But let's hear before that your first piece of music.

Quentin Blake3:25

Let's hear

Quentin Blake3:28

I'm a a sort of um musical illiterate, so I'm one of these people who only knows what I like, but this is a piece of um Janacek's quartet intimate letters, which is I when I discovered Janacek, I suppose it was when I was a student, I thought it was wonderful because it sounds like what drawing feels like.

Presenter4:41

The opening of Jadicek's second string quartet, Intimate Letters, played by the Prajak Quartet. Quentin Blake, then, you were born just before Christmas in nineteen thirty two, the son of William and Evelyn. You had a bigger brother, but he was ten years older, so quite a bit.

Quentin Blake4:55

That's right. We were like two only children in a way, really.

Presenter4:58

And was it a house full of energy and art and paint and nibs and creativity? No.

Quentin Blake5:05

No, I don't think so. I mean, we we did have a visitor to the house, and I learnt about this afterwards, and and uh

Quentin Blake5:11

Somebody wrote a letter to someone in the family saying, Well, you're going to see Quentin.

Quentin Blake5:18

He doesn't talk very much, but he draws a lot.

Presenter5:21

So you were this quiet little boy in a pebble-dashed semi in Kent, with your bedroom looking out down the garden onto the railway line.

Quentin Blake5:29

That's not bad, yes, that's I think that's right, yes. And then the war.

Presenter5:33

What happens when the war comes?

Quentin Blake5:34

Um, you start uh collecting shrapnel. You sort of carry on. I mean, there is an air aid shelter in the garden, and uh I think I can once remember

Quentin Blake5:45

Seeing bombs dropping out of an aeroplane, and I can remember being at a party, strangely.

Quentin Blake5:51

a birthday party or something like that where you could see

Quentin Blake5:54

The red glow of the fires in East London.

Quentin Blake5:59

That which was the blitz?

Presenter6:01

So we've established, then, Quentin, that the need to draw started early. You were, by all accounts, pretty gifted individual.

Presenter6:09

But the schoolmasters had a different idea about where your future lay.

Quentin Blake6:13

Yeah.

Presenter6:13

Yeah.

Quentin Blake6:13

Traditionally, they did, because it wasn't the sort of school where you did art very much, you were allowed to do it. I mean, there's a great tradition of that, you know, but chaps who are not very bright are allowed to do art or woodwork sort of thing. But you were a bright chap. Well, I was quite bright. I mean, I could do the other exams. But I mean, what I wanted to do was be left alone to draw something, you know, get on with drawing something. I remember there was an art master there who it was obviously had to get people to draw who didn't like drawing, and he got you to do wild wandering lines, you know, and then you had to look at it and see what you and

Presenter6:24

You were right.

Quentin Blake6:48

I could only ever make octopuses out of it. But at the in the sixth form I was taught by a man called Stanley Simmonds, who was a real painter and has only just died recently, and he really talked to you like a serious artist and told you what you had done.

Quentin Blake7:05

And that was where I began to get some sort of basis.

Quentin Blake7:09

Your second piece of music. The second piece of music is part of

Quentin Blake7:13

Ravel's piano concerto, not the one for the left hand, the one in in G major, but it's got that sort of wonderful spirit of poise and vivacity and energy which I admire in a lot of French music.

Presenter8:22

The opening of Ravel's Piano Concerto in G major, played by Zoltan Kotschich. The next record that we're going to hear in just a moment was released in nineteen forty nine. Something extraordinary happened to you in nineteen forty nine, which was as a sixteen year old.

Presenter8:35

You had your first work published in Punch. You must have been the the youngest person ever to draw from Punch.

Quentin Blake8:41

I've well, actually, not. There was somebody else actually in the 19th century who was Dickie Doyle, who was a man I may have admired enormously. He was 16 as well, I think. But no, I've probably somewhere I've still got the letter from the art editor, which in handwriting at the bottom says, Congratulations to the youngest contributor. That was terribly important for me. I can still remember getting that letter standing at the bottom of the stairs, you know, where the letters arrived, kind of thing. They were terrible drawings, really. I mean, you know, I could draw well enough to get the joke across.

Presenter8:47

And how old was he?

Speaker 18:48

Sixteen as well.

Speaker 18:59

Yeah.

Quentin Blake9:12

To get it into the paper, and they were very small drawings, but that got me started.

Presenter9:17

It takes quite a lot of steel for a sixteen-year-old to be sending his drawings to Punch. Where did you get that self-determination?

Quentin Blake9:22

Well, I actually sent drawings for two years before anything was accepted, and at the end.

Quentin Blake9:28

I wrote rather pathetically saying um

Quentin Blake9:31

I've been sending these drawings in for two years. Could I bring some in? And in fact, I did go to Punch Office, which was very grand in those days. It was like a London men's club, you know, with chaps in suits. And I sat in the waiting-room, and the secretary gave me some copies of The New Yorker, I think, or something like that. And I was sitting there reading those next to a woman who eventually disappeared. And then she came back after about half an hour and said, Oh, are you still here?

Quentin Blake9:58

We thought you were with that lady who was

Quentin Blake10:01

And I had to go back another day. But any but they were very nice to me, and that's when they they they took two of these little drawings.

Presenter10:07

If we were to leaf through some of those nineteen forty-nine editions of Punch, would we recognize the drawings as notably Quentin Blake drawings?

Quentin Blake10:15

Uh you might do. Um they're quite economical, but um

Quentin Blake10:20

You might recognize them, but it it's the that way of drawing, which I now know people recognize, happened really when I was twenty something. And gradually I relaxed. And in fact, if you're relaxed, you draw much better because you're thinking about what that is, what that gesture is that that person is making. You're not thinking about am I going to spoil it, you know, which is which is the important thing, I think.

Presenter10:41

Spoil it, you know

Presenter10:45

At the same time, then, that you are beginning to have small but significant success with your drawings, in school they are coaching you, hothousing you, because they think you are bound for Cambridge and great things.

Quentin Blake10:58

Yes, I don't know about the great things, but insofar as it is.

Presenter11:00

Well, insofar as you you're you're the first there's a small group of boys who are being coached to go on to the big university.

Quentin Blake11:05

You're quite right, but there were very few people at that time did go to Oxford or Cambridge from our school or indeed from any schools except uh private schools, I think.

Presenter11:14

And you were the first in your family to even go to university, is that right?

Quentin Blake11:17

Yeah, I think so.

Presenter11:18

Yes, yes. What did your parents make of of this journey and this uh you seem to be playing it down. Did they play it down or were they congratulating you on getting into university?

Quentin Blake11:26

I think they oh no, they were pleased. They were pleased about that. Um I don't think they had quite the sense of of what it meant really, I think, you know. I mean, I think they were pleased for me. And of course, having passed through the thirties, which was a a a difficult time for employment, I mean, they they were anxious that my brother and I should have reliable jobs. You would think of that as being in the civil service or in a bank or something like that, or being a teacher.

Quentin Blake11:52

And in fact, it was a teacher that I I went through with that experience.

Presenter11:57

And so for them, you going to Cambridge meant that that was a greater a solid chance, in fact, of your life being a comfortable, reliable, straightforward person.

Quentin Blake12:04

Reliable, straightforward.

Presenter12:07

See you next piece.

Quentin Blake12:07

The next piece of music is it's really a bit to do with Cambridge. When I got to Cambridge, I started to learn a bit more about music, and this is a song by

Quentin Blake12:18

John Dowland, In Darkness Let Me Dwell. And it seems for me it will, as I'm listening to it, it gathers up both the sense of reading Shakespeare, of being at Cambridge, of encountering new kinds of music, and so it takes me back to that time, as well as being, I think, very good to listen to now as well.

Speaker 412:42

Oh despair to borrow.

Speaker 412:50

The cheerful light from me.

Speaker 413:00

Oh, black.

Speaker 413:09

That morsel that moves.

Speaker 413:19

God's understill.

Speaker 413:25

Shall we shall win?

Presenter13:37

Counter tenor Alfred Deller singing John Dowland's In Darkness, Let Me Dwell. So, Quentin Blake, in nineteen fifty three, it's Off to University and all the things we associate with that. Did you start really having a good time?

Quentin Blake13:49

I started having a good time in one way because I was reading a lot of books, but I wasn't it was curious. I think I was rather we were at a rather serious college, at least I felt one ought to be serious. And so I didn't do a lot of things by way of parties and theatricals and things of that kind. I think I was probably regarded as a bit of a disappointment as a student in that department. So that was all.

Presenter14:12

So that was all going on around you, but it sort of since you were much more self-contained.

Quentin Blake14:14

But it's not a good idea.

Quentin Blake14:16

Well, I inhibited, I think, is probably what I'm trying to say. Thank you for saying that. But it was very valuable to me, and I liked it. I started going to live classes at the art school. I art edited one or two issues of Granter, which in those days was the student magazine. But I didn't quite feel I was part of that.

Presenter14:19

Thank you for saying that.

Quentin Blake14:37

world entirely. It may be that that there were you know a lot of public school boys there and I was a grammar school boy or maybe I didn't m quite make that transition. And in a sense I suppose when I came to teach at the Royal College of Art later on I was more in I I caught up on some of the the as it were student life that I'd uh rather neglected when I was at Cambridge.

Presenter15:00

Interesting. We might explore that later. The plan, though, while you were at Canada. Not too far.

Quentin Blake15:03

Not too far.

Presenter15:04

The plan when you were at Cambridge then was was to study to go on to teach. I mean, uh, teaching for you, did you have any passion for teaching or was it just a case of needs must and you knew that at the end there needed to be a job and that job seemed appropriate to be teaching?

Quentin Blake15:04

The plan when

Quentin Blake15:14

No, no, no, no, no, I really wanted to do it. I mean, I I'm I'm passionate about it actually. I went on to do a teaching year at London University School of Education. And in fact, curious enough, while I was doing that year,

Quentin Blake15:28

I was offered a job as

Quentin Blake15:31

Assistant Art Director on Punch.

Quentin Blake15:33

Um

Presenter15:34

Quite a grand job to be offered.

Quentin Blake15:35

And and I turned it down.

Quentin Blake15:39

Why on earth did you tell me?

Presenter15:39

Well I

Quentin Blake15:44

Where I was going, really. I was getting out of jokes, and I wanted to get, I mean, somewhere in me, I wanted to be a book illustrator, you know, kind of thing. Was that developed in your head at that point? It was.

Presenter15:52

Was that departed in your head at that point?

Quentin Blake15:55

Yeah, I think it was actually. I think I mean not well defined, but I think it was growing there. And I mean, it was rather funny when I I I turned down the job and you know, and then of course, as one does, you know, I got cold feet the next day and rang up and said, Oh, what happens if I change my mind? They said we've appointed somebody else.

Quentin Blake16:11

So but I mean it was a relief really. But it's very strange how you come to do right things sometimes, because I was actually right not to take that job, you know, because I I I didn't want to become

Quentin Blake16:25

That kind of art director. I wanted to be an artist in my own right, really, I think, you know.

Presenter16:30

Many might have thought that at the time that turning down a job like that at a a well established uh publication like Punch was madness. In a in a sense you're saying there was a an instinct that was flying in the face of reason and flying in the face of

Presenter16:42

What mum and dad had always said, which was something solid, a good idea, something that will give you an income. Has that been a a theme? Are you quite an instinctual creature?

Quentin Blake16:45

Yeah, some

Quentin Blake16:49

Well, I don't know. I think everybody is, but I think I am to some extent. I mean, I think there are instincts that direct you, and there was one that took me to.

Presenter16:49

Yeah.

Speaker 116:49

Uh

Presenter16:49

I don't know.

Quentin Blake16:57

Chelsea Art School, which was the next stage, because I'd read about a man called Brian Robb, who was both a painter and a cartoonist and an illustrator. And I was looking for somewhere where I could go and do life drawing, because I knew that I just didn't know enough to draw the things I wanted to draw. And I discovered he was teaching at Chelsea and I went there. And that I got myself there in retrospect is a kind of miracle because he actually changed the rest of my life.

Presenter17:29

Fourth piece of music.

Quentin Blake17:31

The next piece of music is one of the C interludes from Benjamin Britton's Peter Grimes, and I like it because it's got that sense of

Quentin Blake17:41

Flatness and water that I associate with the marshes that I spend a lot of my time in.

Presenter18:38

That was Dawn, one of the C interludes from Benjamin Britton's Peter Grimes.

Presenter18:43

So Quentin Blake then, you had graduated from university, you'd done your teacher training. Did life after that start to open up a bit? I mean, where were you living? What was the day-to-day existence?

Quentin Blake18:52

Yeah, I l I I've got um a little jo a little regular job with Punch and in those days that meant ten pounds a week and I live with my parents for a while.

Presenter19:01

So back at home after university

Quentin Blake19:02

Yes, that's right. I didn't like it very much. I mean, I didn't like it because I liked them, if you see what I mean, so it was harder to rebel. Um, but eventually I I went and uh lived in a flat in London and um

Quentin Blake19:15

The work, Bill.

Presenter19:17

You mentioned that you joined the the Royal College of Art and in in the seventies the awards, big awards start to come in. You're at the Royal College of Art. It seems to me that life then started the jacket started to fit a bit better. You started to expand as a person in terms of the life you were living.

Quentin Blake19:30

Yes, no, no, it was it it was wonderful in two ways. I mean uh Brian Robb, who I'd known at Chelsea, went to the RCA and um

Quentin Blake19:41

taught illustration there and he said to me uh

Quentin Blake19:45

You wouldn't like a part-time job here, would you? You know. And and I thought about that for about

Quentin Blake19:50

Five seconds, you know, said yes without knowing what I was saying yes to. Actually, I thought it would be a very part-time job, you know, a sort of humble role where you crept in once or twice a week. But in fact, of course, the the department had thirty students, but it only had three tutors, and so I, you know, you became a a a pillar of that department immediately, you know, and and and a lot of my um

Speaker 119:51

Two

Speaker 120:04

And three

Quentin Blake20:13

friends are, you know, uh were students at the ex-students. Well, I mean, they were they were postgraduate students, you know, and I was thirty something, they were twenty something, so the distance wasn't huge, you know, and I still know lots of them.

Presenter20:24

Your next piece of music, Quentin, then, is very different from the first four that we've heard, and it hints at something of the looshness that you I mean I get the impression you're almost living your student life at this point in time.

Quentin Blake20:31

Get the impact

Quentin Blake20:35

There was an element of that, I think. This is not a kind of music I really know anything about, but if I wanted to be reminded of a party at the RCA, I mean any of those parties at the RCA in the late sixties and seventies, this would do it for me. I think it's it's it's I heard it through the grapevine.

Speaker 420:55

You have better wonder how I do

Speaker 420:59

I'll chose lands to make

Speaker 421:03

But somewhere the gun

Speaker 421:05

Between the two of us guys, you know I love you more.

Speaker 421:10

It took me by surprise I must say

Speaker 421:15

When I found my castle face, what did you know that I had?

Presenter21:25

Marvin Gay and I heard it through the grapevine, bringing back Quentin Blake and memories of those parties in the late sixties and seventies at the Royal College of Art. Let's examine for a moment this curious process and opaque to those of us on the outside process of collaboration between the writer and the illustrator. I mean you've worked with some of the greatest names. We will come on to talk about one of the greatest in a moment, but but people like Michael Rosen, Joan Aitken. How does the collaboration work?

Quentin Blake21:53

Well, it's it's it's fascinating because I mean sometimes people say to you, No, you must enjoy doing your own work best, you know, but really I like collaborating with people. And what you do first of all is you collaborate with what they've written.

Quentin Blake22:04

So you read it intensely and you read it several times and you try and

Quentin Blake22:09

Get the atmosphere of what that is, and then you do some drawings and try and draw what you feel is there, and where it should go, and which bits you should draw.

Quentin Blake22:20

And really it's after that that they that that that you talk

Quentin Blake22:23

To the author, I think.

Quentin Blake22:25

And then that gives them a chance. It's no good saying, what shall I draw? You know, I mean, you have to make your commitment to it.

Presenter22:31

It's fair to say that, I mean, you are thought to be up there with the greats, to be up there with uh Shepherd and and Tenniel.

Quentin Blake22:38

Mm.

Presenter22:40

The match that was made in heaven, and the moment at which people seem to absolutely stand back and take notice, is the marriage between you and Roald Dahl. How did it begin?

Quentin Blake22:51

Well, he he moved from his previous publisher to Jonathan Cape, and the director of Jonathan Cape was Tom Mashler.

Quentin Blake22:59

And I think he'd suggested to Raoul that he would write a picture book, which he'd never done before, and he wrote The Enormous Crocodile, and then I was one of the people that was suggested to illustrate it.

Presenter23:10

You've said about the the the enormous crocodile that the the actual crocodile's teeth were teeth for eating children with. Oh yes. And that in a sense chimes beautifully so often with what we read in Roldah, which is this sense of things not just hinting at terror, but absolutely screaming with terror.

Quentin Blake23:26

Absolutely.

Quentin Blake23:28

Yes, yeah. Well, I mean, he says, I think he says in the text that teeth rattled, you know, well, I mean, crocodiles' teeth don't. And I thought it was a sort of cross between a Punch and Judy crocodile and Richard III sort of thing. I mean, it's that kind of embodiment of evil. I mean, the book is the guide. The book is always the guide. But it leads you to find things which you mightn't have found otherwise.

Presenter23:49

The first time that you worked with Darlene, there was a sort of a beauty contest to see if you were going to get the work. I think so, yes.

Quentin Blake23:55

I I I kn I never knew and I never asked, but uh at that time I had an American agent who said other people had been asked.

Presenter24:02

Right. And but it it changed from simply the beauty contest and him ticking the box and saying, This chap seems the right chap.

Quentin Blake24:02

And

Quentin Blake24:07

Yeah.

Presenter24:08

to actual collaboration which started on the BFG, the big friendly giant.

Quentin Blake24:12

Well, really, I I mean the BFG it really worked better in a way because it went wrong slightly in that it's a much longer book and I think everybody except Rald thought that it was going to have a scattering of illustrations, you know, rather different from the two previous ones. And it was actually at the printers, you know, and I'd done a dozen or so drawings. He'd approved of the drawings, but he was horrified to discover there were only these. So over the weekend, that weekend, I did chapter heading drawings for the twenty-three chapters, or whatever it is, and delivered them after the weekend, and feeling quite pleased with them, and I'd got it done. And the next day they rang up and said, He's still not happy.

Quentin Blake24:55

And we started again.

Presenter24:56

But you're laughing now. I mean, after two days of concerted effort to get all those chapter headings done, did you laugh at the time? I don't know whether I laughed at the time.

Quentin Blake24:57

Uh

Quentin Blake25:00

Yeah.

Quentin Blake25:05

Possibly, no. I gritted my teeth, I expect. But we did start again. I mean, and it's very difficult to talk about it not with hindsight, in a way, because Roald made a list of things. These are the things I think we ought to draw. And that was when I started going down to Great Missenden and taking the drawings.

Presenter25:05

Crying possibly.

Quentin Blake25:26

And you weren't just sort of a little sort of salad or parsley added to it afterwards with no effect.

Presenter25:32

They were integral.

Quentin Blake25:32

You were integral to it, you know, and he he he needed that, he wanted that.

Presenter25:32

You were intrinsic.

Quentin Blake25:38

Oh, the big well, uh

Quentin Blake25:41

I drew what Rald had had written in the text. And he said he w the BFG, the big friendly giant, he wore a big leather apron and boots, you know, so Wellington boots. I drew that.

Speaker 125:47

If

Quentin Blake25:53

And of course he mentions it. He doesn't mention it again in the book.

Quentin Blake25:56

But

Quentin Blake25:57

I draw it, and I draw it in every wretched picture, of course, you know, and after a few of these, Rod said, I don't like this apron much. It gets in the way, doesn't it? you know, when he has to run and jump up and down, and that sort of thing. And we went back and redesigned what he was going to wear.

Quentin Blake26:13

and thought all that through. We got it all worked out, but we couldn't do the shoes.

Quentin Blake26:18

And so I went off home, and a bit later there's a very strange kind of brown paper parcel, obviously made by Roald himself, arrived, and it's got this big sandal in it.

Quentin Blake26:27

And if you look in the book, you can see it. You know, I mean that's that's what that's what he's wearing. I think doing it twice, which effectively what I did, was like cooking something twice, you know. I think the flavours got better. Your sixth record. The the sixth record is

Speaker 126:28

General

Quentin Blake26:41

Well, it comes from that time, or really a bit before it, and I just thought uh in relation to the desert island.

Quentin Blake26:48

It might be nice to um have a hint of memory of the weather back home. So this is Flanders and Swan, who I remember seeing on the stage in the fifties and sixties, and this is very terse and to the point. It's a song of the weather.

Speaker 427:04

January brings the snow, makes your feet and fingers glow.

Speaker 427:13

February is ice and snow.

Speaker 427:15

Dark November brings the fog

Speaker 427:18

Should not do it to a dog.

Speaker 427:24

Freezing wet December there

Speaker 427:29

Bloody January again, and we're all in drinks for a day.

Presenter27:34

Flanders and Swan a song of the weather to remind you on the desert island of just how bad it can be back in England, Quentin Blake. In nineteen ninety nine you were appointed the first Children's Laureate, which sounds like a grand title. What did it mean, and and was it important to you at the time?

Quentin Blake27:49

Yeah.

Presenter27:50

Yeah.

Quentin Blake27:50

It was important to me. I mean, before it happened, I thought, oh, that sounds who's going to take a notice of somebody called a children's laureate? You know, it sounded rather sort of self-conscious. But of course, once they said

Quentin Blake28:01

You we've chosen you. My attitude changed in me suddenly thought it was a wonderful idea. I suddenly thought it was a wonderful idea. Well, the great thing about it is what that laureate badge meant you could do all kinds of things that I wouldn't have

Presenter28:04

Yeah.

Presenter28:06

Yeah.

Quentin Blake28:14

presumed to ask to do, I thought

Quentin Blake28:17

It'd be quite nice to have some children's book illustrations in the National Gallery. And so we did a show.

Quentin Blake28:23

called Tell Me a Picture, which had children's book illustrations, contemporary paintings, modern paintings, and works of the old masters, and um hung them alphabetically, so none was raised above the other, if you see what I mean.

Presenter28:37

And in this exhibition, B was not for Blake, but Blake was everywhere in it. Explain how you made your presence felt.

Quentin Blake28:40

It was everywhere in it. Explain how you made your presence felt. There was an artist called Michael Wilson, who at that time was director of exhibitions at the National Gallery. He said, We can only have one artist for each letter of the alphabet. So I said, Well, there's a bit of a problem about B then. Is it me or Botticelli or Bruegel? He said, No, no, you're not in it at all. Oh. He said, But there's a lot of room on the wall. You could draw on the walls.

Quentin Blake29:07

And I said.

Quentin Blake29:09

Are you allowed to do that?

Quentin Blake29:11

And he said we want it to look as little like the National Gallery as possible.

Quentin Blake29:15

And so I d I drew between the pictures and uh I hope they introduced you to the pictures rather than put you off.

Presenter29:23

Right, Quentin Blake, your next record.

Quentin Blake29:25

The the next one is what is going back to this business of um of of of drawing, and this is um Vorjak's cello concerto, and it's played by Casals, who again um

Quentin Blake29:40

Plays it, as I say, as though he was playing it with some wonderfully scratchy implement.

Presenter30:45

Pablo Casales, playing part of Dvorak's cello concerto in B minor. Quentin, you've been drawing and writing for children for forty six years. Has what they want changed?

Presenter30:56

Do you know I don't know?

Quentin Blake31:00

Uh the first book I ever did I tried out in a

Quentin Blake31:04

in an infant school. And I've never tried them out since. And I I I mean, obviously I think about them and, you know, and I'm trained as a teacher and I you know, I have some sense of the audience. But, um

Quentin Blake31:17

What I thought when I started was, I'll do this, and if they like it, I'll go on doing it.

Presenter31:22

A reviewer once remarked that your book books often feature

Presenter31:25

what they described as a solitary, perhaps slightly eccentric character attempting to cope with whatever degree of success. Might that hint at you?

Quentin Blake31:34

Is it to you?

Quentin Blake31:36

Yeah.

Presenter31:36

No, no, no, I

Quentin Blake31:37

I hope I'm not being rude. No, no, no. No, I'm cooked magnificently.

Presenter31:38

I hope I'm not being rude.

Quentin Blake31:42

Your eighth record. The eighth record comes out of another experience which I had last year when I was asked to put on an exhibition, rather like the National Gallery one, at the reopening of the Petit Palais Museum in Paris. And I did huge drawings on the walls to introduce nineteenth-century paintings and prints of women. And I also did a book of French verse for my French publisher. And one of the poems in it is a poem or song by Georges Brassins called Le Para Pluis, the Umbrella. And it seemed just right. I went out of the Petit Palais one day, was lucky enough to get in a taxi, got into the taxi, and this was playing on the radio.

Speaker 132:31

Il pleuve for, sur la grand route, El chemine, sans para plui, Je na vaisin, vaux les sans dout, Le matames manami.

Speaker 132:45

Courantalore, as a rescous, Re luis propos a peu d'abaris, Inse chan l'our safrimous, Donertredou elle ma de wi.

Speaker 133:00

Wonderful

Presenter33:00

Foster Georges Bressons and Le Para Pluis.

Presenter33:04

One would imagine that on this desert island solitude might not be too much of a problem. It's it's a solitary profession that you've worked at for all these years.

Quentin Blake33:12

Yes, um

Quentin Blake33:14

But I like going out to talk to friends and editors and complaining and things of that kind, so it it might not be so easy, and I shall do my best. Night.

Presenter33:23

You have, of course, the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare. One more book is allowed. What would it be?

Quentin Blake33:27

Would it be?

Quentin Blake33:29

I don't know, perhaps the

Quentin Blake33:31

Oh, it's very difficult. Collected poems of Lord Byron, the collected poems of Alexander Pope.

Quentin Blake33:37

Or perhaps if there's a big volume with a lot of Dickens in it, that's probably what I would have to settle for.

Presenter33:41

Right, we'll give you that. Um, your luxury item.

Quentin Blake33:45

Yeah.

Quentin Blake33:45

Well, it's that again is a problem because what I really want is an everlasting supply of arsh watercolour paper. But of course, I don't regard that as a luxury. It's what it's it's a necessity.

Presenter33:55

Well, we wouldn't have to.

Presenter33:58

If you could fix it for me, I would accept that. Right, so that's your luxury item. And if i if the waves were to to sweep away your collection of music, which one would you run through the sand to save?

Presenter34:11

Mary Anna Czech. Quentin Blake, thank you very much for letting us hear your desert island discs. Thank you.

Presenter34:23

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists archive.

Presenter34:27

For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio for