Helen Oxenbury

Speaker 30:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.

Presenter0:04

Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs Podcast. Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury they'd want to take with them if they were castaway to a desert island. And, for rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:45

My castaway this week is the illustrator and author Helen Oxenbury. She's one of the UK's best-loved children's illustrators and her books have been family favourites for over 50 years, winning the prestigious Kate Greenaway Medal twice and selling an astonishing 35 million copies. Her artistry, her talent for capturing an emotional memory and her tender observation of the details of children's lives mean her illustrations resonate with readers of all ages. If I say we're going on a bear hunt, you will probably feel the wind and hear the squelch of mud, even if you last read the book decades ago. Like much of her work, Bear Hunt brings a domestic adventure vividly to life with an intimacy and informality that makes it all the more affecting.

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The books Characterful Animals, Insucient Children and Natural Landscapes are recurring themes in her work, which ranges from collaborations like the modern classic So Much to the nineteen ninety nine edition of her own childhood favorite, Alice in Wonderland.

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As an author illustrator, she broke new ground. She was the first person to come up with board books about babies for babies and one of the first to feature subjects from different ethnic backgrounds. Though whether her books are as pleasurable to create as they are to consume is another question. She says, People have the impression that illustration is jolly. I suppose it is in a way, but it is very hard work as well. It can consume you. It's so personal that you feel as if you're putting yourself on a plate.

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Helen Oxenbury, welcome to Desert Island Discs. Thank you very much.

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So Helen, as you say, your work is all consuming. How much of yourself ends up in the illustrations you create?

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Uh, well, I doubt about myself, but certainly my family, my children.

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And um friends' children. I think I think it's inevitable that you're influenced by your children and the way they look.

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I could stare at them for hours. They're so lovely, and so sort of innocent and hopeless, and

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Ah, charming.

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I can do that also with adults.

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Anybody. I just love looking at people and watching how they act.

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What is it that you're looking for?

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I love to sort of imagine what their relationship is, uh, what they do. I have to be quite careful not to stare. I used to have a little Jack Russell. I used to go and have

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coffee with up at the cafe.

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And I honestly think he enjoyed doing it too. So there were two of us.

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watching people go up and down and sitting at different c tables and things.

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Do you sketch in public?

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No, no, I jolly well don't. I couldn't bear that, having people looking over and uh commenting and no, I li I'm very, very private when I work.

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And of course, you know, there's the watching people, but there's also that lovely soft power, you might call it, that you have as an illustrator. You're invited into children's worlds, into their imagination, with your illustrations. That's such a lovely thing. I wonder how you feel about your readers.

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One mustn't

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Talk down to the children.

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And these stories are usually read to them by their parents, their mother or their father.

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And you have to slightly

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appeal to them too. I I know it from personal experience that I've actually hid books because I just couldn't bear to to face them again. All right, Helen, time to hear your first disc. Tell us why you've chosen this one.

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I loved musicals as a teenager and longed to do tap dancing. I did ballet, but I really, really wanted to be a tap dancer, like Gene Kelly and Sid Serise and all those people. But Westside's story absolutely took musicals to another level.

Helen Oxenbury4:39

I like to be in America. Okay, by me in America. Everything free in America. For a small beat in America.

Helen Oxenbury4:52

I like the city of San Juan. I know about you can guess on. Hundreds of flowers in full bloom. Hundreds of people in each room. Automobile in America. Chrome sea in America.

Presenter5:09

America from Westside Story, composed by Leonard Bernstein, with lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, performed by the original Broadway cast. Alan Oxenbury, you once said the great challenge of illustration is how to convey emotion economically. So, how do you deal with the complexity of human emotion in just a few lines? Where do you start?

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I thi I think I can sort of understand little children.

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Uh a bit.

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I know what they're going through, either shyness or bullying or, I don't know, happiness and all those things. And it's just the the the the gestures they make.

Helen Oxenbury5:43

Two.

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When they are expressing these, they may not be able to do it with words, you see. Yes. So it is their um body language, I suppose. I mean, the details matter as well, don't they, in illustration? I know that eyebrows are very important to you. Why is that?

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Oh dear. Well, there are certain things that you can gauge people's

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Mood

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By their eyebrows. Yes, I mean, I know I know what I want to do.

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It's just getting it from the hand, or the head, the hand, and then on onto the page. How do you know when it's finished?

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Ah.

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And I I really need somebody who'll come and snatch it away because I often go on and on and and ruin it and have to start again.

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When you arrived on the publishing scene in the 60s, publishers were just beginning to grasp the potential of illustrated books for children, weren't they? Especially as at that time public libraries suddenly had budgets to invest in that market. So it was a publishing boom and it brought your work to our attention along with peers like Quentin Blake, Raymond Briggs, Shirley Hughes. What was it like to be part of that? It must have been an exciting time.

Helen Oxenbury6:52

Yeah.

Presenter7:03

It was getting over the war years, wasn't it? It was a sort of a like a a new a new beginning. Did you discuss art and ideas? I mean, what we used to discuss mostly, if if we discussed it at all, was about was publishers and editors and and art.

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And we used to we used to tear them to shreds. But, um

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We didn't sort of talk about art particularly.

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I think um

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It's a very personal thing and you can't really talk about it.

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I didn't want to talk about it anyway.

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It's time for some more music, Helen. Tell us about your second disc today. What are we going to hear and why? Sebastian Walker was a dear friend of ours and he started Walker Books and he used to invite John and I to

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Glinborn to the opera.

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And um

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We went to see Fidelio.

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There was a poor chap two rows in front of us. He was trying so hard not to sneeze, and he was doing very well. And we hit um a very quiet part of the of the opera. He's doing very, very well not to sneeze, but he was suddenly overcome with this enormous sneeze.

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And

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to repress it.

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He did a huge fart.

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Which echoed all round the auditorium in this very quiet passage.

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But of course the orders, they were so polite, they just did a little sort of jump. They jumped a bit. But that was it. They wouldn't

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Four man.

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Oh.

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Yes, we are certainly a great fish and all

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I'll be so

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Oh God.

Presenter9:38

Hopefully no disruptions at home during the quiet sections there. I Feel So Wonderful from Beethoven's Opera Fidelio performed by Lisa Milne, Anya Camper, Andrew Kennedy and Brindley Sherritt with the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Mark Elder. Helen Oxenbury, you were born in Ipswich. Your father was an architect and your mother looked after the home. You suffered from asthma and were confined to bed quite a lot. That must have been difficult for you. Well I didn't sort of know anything else, but my... I was supplied with a lot of paper and pencils and marbles and all sorts of things to play with in bed.

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So I did a lot of drawing then.

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What were your subjects in those days? What were you trying to capture? I drew my father.

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And my grandfather.

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And I've still got the painting of my grandfather with very, very odd fingers.

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But it his his actual face looks quite good.

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He he loved cricket and used to listen to the cricket on the radio.

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And I think that's I I sketched him while he was listening.

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So I know that you've said your mother Muriel was a a huge influence on you. Tell me a little bit about your relationship. Yes, she was. I mean I again you have to remember the the um when it was and fathers sort of didn't really play much part in in my life. My father didn't. He he was a jolly good father. He was always there, kind, gentleman.

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Um he was absolutely so involved with his work, though. But um my mother was the main influence.

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She enjoyed us without being too possessive. She let us run free.

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When you were eight you moved to Felixstowe in Suffolk with your family. I know that the big skies and the mud flats have made it into your illustrations many years later.

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Yes, that was in a a a place a little further up the coast called the Ferry, the Felix Stow Ferry.

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I used to go there and play a lot.

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Go up there on my bicycle.

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It was on an estuary, uh uh right on the estuary, and when the tide went out, the a lot of mud flats were revealed.

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and the sky used to be reflected into the mud flats.

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There's something about that landscape. Now it sort of got under my skin and when I go there now, and I do because I've got a we've got a boathouse there, it's absolute I sort of could feel I can breathe again and looking out to sea and those skies.

Helen Oxenbury12:12

Hmm.

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It it refreshes m me.

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And physically, when you moved there, your health improved as well, you became quite sporty.

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What were you playing? I know, I thought it was like the other side of the coin from this sort of.

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Poor child is in bed all the time.

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to this child was never off the tennis court.

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which was must have been marvellous for my parents, because it got me through the teenage years.

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You know, they never had to worry about where I was,'cause I was on a tennis court.

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whacking a ball across a net and then I got really

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terribly involved in it. I've played uh twice at uh Junior Wimbledon. You think you might be good, but when you get to Junior Wimbledon you realise.

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You're not.

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It's time for some more music, Helen. This is your third disc today. Tell us about this one.

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In our house in Felixstowe,

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We had a a wind-up gramophone.

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And I think we had about half a dozen records.

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The one that my brother and I played and played.

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It's called Tubby the Tuber by Danny Kay.

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And we loved it.

Helen Oxenbury13:27

He was a fat little tubal, puffing away, but oh, so slow.

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Oh, what lovely music thought Tubby, and he sighed.

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Here, what's the matter? said People the Piccolo.

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Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

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Uh

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Uh Uh

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Oh, said Tubby, every time we do a new piece you all get such pretty melodies to play, and I never, never a pretty melody.

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Toby the Tuber, performed by Danny Kaye. So, Helen Oxenbury, I know that you had a happy primary school experience, but you didn't enjoy secondary school as much. Why not?

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I think I just had such a great time at home.

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I mean, I wasn't I wasn't s sitting and

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watching television. I I was doing things all the time.

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And um it was much more interesting.

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An inspiring than than school for me. I mean, I didn't like it, and I don't think it liked me.

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The art teacher said she thought I should go to art school, but I think it was because there was absolutely no hope about anything else.

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It was art or nothing. Well, you did. You went to Ipswich School of Art, and I think that was a bit of a turning point. Tell me what happened.

Helen Oxenbury14:48

But

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Oh gosh, that was so enjoyable by comparison. And um

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One was treated like an adult. You had a very exacting teacher, I understand, Piff.

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Tell me about it. It was terrible. It was terrible. It was terribly rude. It was terribly rude to everybody.

Helen Oxenbury15:04

There is

Helen Oxenbury15:06

Excuse the terror voice.

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I think it was if he thought you could do better. I think if he thought there was no hope he he just sort of left you alone.

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For years afterwards I could hear him saying, you know,

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Why, those people aren't standing on the surface they're floating in the air

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and things like that. It was marvellous.

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At nineteen you enrolled then at the Central School of Art and Design and you were studying theatre design. What was the attraction of that? During the holidays when I was at Ipswich Art School,

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I used to work at the in the repertory theatre and I I was sort of mixing paint and

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Painting flats and the s you know, the scenery and um.

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Nothing too sort of uh responsible, but I enjoyed it and I l I thought this is something I would like to do.

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It was around that time that you met your future husband, John Birningham, who was studying graphic design and illustration at Central himself. What was your first impression of him?

Helen Oxenbury16:00

He was studying

Helen Oxenbury16:04

Oh, is it?

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I thought he looked a bit like James Dean.

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And um

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We used to laugh our heads off at things and uh

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It all s it all seemed very possible and nice.

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After art school John got a job in Israel. He was making puppets and you followed him out there and you were working painting sets at the Herbimah Theatre in Tel Aviv, the National Theatre of Israel. It must have been such a a rewarding experience to travel and live somewhere new. It was full of full of hope and energy and life.

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Tel Aviv I'm talking about. You'd walk down the street.

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and from every house there would be

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piano being practised or a violin being played. Very, very inspiring. I loved it.

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Helena, to take a break for some music. This is disc number four. Tell me about it. While I was in Israel, I stayed in a flat and I was introduced to the music of Erogana. I was absolutely

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enthralled with it. I thought it was the best thing ever.

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Errol Garner and Lullaby of Birdland. Helen Oxenbury, in 1964, you married John, who is by this time writing and illustrating picture books for children. Motherhood and the birth of your children, Lucy and Bill, was the spur for you to begin drawing professionally, I think. How did it happen? I didn't want to carry on with theatre design because I wanted to stay at home with the children.

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So I started working for Jan Pienkoski, who had started Gallery Five, which is a greeting cards company.

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Cards up until then had been very

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quite boring, sort of kittens in baskets and bunches of flowers and things. And he he got a completely new look.

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and I did a few cards for him. And I'd also watched John doing I think about two books by then.

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So I thought I'll do a book.

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that is very, very simple, which was a counting book.

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And um

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Took it to Heinemann.

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They hardly had a children's section in those days, and they published it.

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And that was it. I was off. How did you work at the time? Was it at the kitchen table after the kids were asleep?

Helen Oxenbury19:25

Again,

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Yes. When they were in bed I I would get everything, all the stuff out, the paints and what not. But then I I couldn't just leave it, which is what I do now, which is lovely, and uh just walk away from it. I had to clear it all away.

Helen Oxenbury19:37

Hmm.

Presenter19:41

So for breakfast the next morning? Yes, Alan. This was obviously also the the height of the feminist movement at at this point. How did your own experiences as a mother inform the work that you were doing, both in the the greetings cards, I think, that you were creating and then in your early books?

Presenter19:58

Well, the book that sort of went down rather well with Spare Rip, do you think? Yes, The Feminist Magazine, of course. Yes, The Feminist Magazine was a book called Meal One. And that was by Ivor Cutler.

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who was a great feminist quite mad, really, but it was about a a single mother

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being a a a friend, I suppose, to her son, and she got in she gets involved in football and playing games with him.

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Uh and then there's a

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tree that grows through the little boy's bed and and then mother turns the clock back. It's a typical Ivor Cutler story and it's terribly difficult to actually to actually tell you what it is in a sensible way. How did you capture the story? Because as you say, it's quite hard to describe, so I would imagine to illustrate perhaps tricky.

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Yes.

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Well, I I made her a sort of r quite a a sturdy lady.

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Did you show John your drawings, and vice versa, or talk about storylines?

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The only time we did is when

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We knew it wasn't right.

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If I knew there was something wrong there, I just couldn't see it, I I would bring it back uh uh to to show John, and vice versa. He had terrible trouble drawing pretty ladies.

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And I used to help him with that. And then I used to have terrible trouble drawing sort of cars and lorries and things. And he'd help me with that. All right, Helen, time for some more music. What are we going to hear next? And why have you chosen it? He was definitely a one-off, Ivor Cutler was. Terribly funny one minute and very annoying the next. And he used to come round always on New Year's Eve.

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But instead of celebrate celebrating New Year's Eve at at midnight with us, he would insist on going at ten to twelve.

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But not only but he ha we had to give him a lift home so that we we all missed it. That that's typical Ivor.

Speaker 222:07

Life in a Scotch sitting room.

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Volume two.

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Episode One.

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The children micturated on to a large sponge which sat by the window.

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If it was boys, the girls had to look hard at the sewing with their fingers by their ears.

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If it was girls, the boys had to cluster in a group in a far corner, whilst

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Episode One from Life in a Scotch Sitting Room Volume 2 Iva Cutler

Presenter22:42

In nineteen seventy eight, your daughter Emily was born, of course a personal joy, but I know that it also changed your professional life. What happened? Poor little Em had um eczema when she was very tiny, and we used to spend a lot of the nights walking round with her, trying to stop her from scratching. And one of the ways was to show her baby catalogues. She definitely recognised the things in this catalogue, and I thought, well, you know, that would be such a good

Presenter23:13

Good idea for a board book. So nineteen eighty one, books for the very earliest readers, these baby board books. Critics have described them as revolutionary. What were you aiming to convey in these illustrations? They're very tender illustrations of cuddly, curious looking babies.

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Emily used to get very, very excited when she looked at the pictures, and there was something there that she recognised. And I thought, well, if

Helen Oxenbury23:38

Hmm.

Presenter23:39

If if Emily recognises it, so would so do all babies. I used to get uh told often it's um not worth doing books with very young children, because they you know, it just uh doesn't register with them.

Presenter23:54

But it jolly well does. It's also a question of children being able to see themselves, isn't it? And families that look like theirs. You know, later on, your books did that. You know, you're one of the first to celebrate diversity and praised for it. I didn't do it with any sort of, you know, oh, I have to do it. It's just you just do what you see around you, really. So that was in books like Clap Hands, Tickle, Tickle, and All Fall Down. And then in 1994, you illustrated a book that went on to be a modern classic. It's So Much, written by Trish Cook. And it's a story about African Caribbean family celebrating the father's birthday. How did you approach the project?

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Bracing the f

Helen Oxenbury24:36

Which they could

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I loved the text instantly.

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There's the expectation, there's excitement of what's you know, what's going on, who's coming next, why are they all gathering in this room. I also decided that instead of doing page after page of full colour,

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which can actually

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Be a bit boring.

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That

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that pages where

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The visitors are waiting for the next

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a person to arrive is in a sort of sepia colour. Um and then you turn the page and they've arrived and they're in colour. It's just very joyous.

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It's time for your next disc, Helen. What are we going to hear? Oh, it's just so lovely. And I used to.

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come back from work.

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and open the front door, and more often than not John would have some sort of piano music playing down in his studio. It was just lovely to open the door and hear it.

Presenter26:43

Schubert's impromptu number three in G Flat performed by Alfred Brendel.

Presenter26:49

Helen Oxenbury, in nineteen eighty nine you were approached to illustrate We're Going on a Bear Hunt, which was written by Michael Rosen and has since become a children's classic. And crucially for you, I think, the text doesn't have any description of where the protagonists are.

Presenter27:04

No, that's right. They they could they could be anybody. In fact, Michael told me afterwards

Presenter27:10

that he had thought of it as sort of kings and queens and a line of sort of historical figures, I think, or something like that. A royal procession on a bear hunt. Something like that.

Helen Oxenbury27:18

Some royal

Helen Oxenbury27:20

On a bear hunt. Something like that.

Presenter27:23

Yes. And that's not at all what you created. Tell us about your institutional. I had a go. I tried it.

Helen Oxenbury27:26

Your instruction

Presenter27:30

I I did roughs to try it out, but it it just didn't wasn't right. I didn't I didn't feel comfortable with it. And I thought it just has to be brought much more simply.

Presenter27:43

Just with some children.

Presenter27:45

How did he react when he saw the the illustrations that you'd created?

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Now he did tell me what he thought, and he said I

Presenter27:53

I I couldn't um relate it to the story, he said. I was absolutely amazed. I think he in the end he came round to it and he liked it, but he was very surprised.

Presenter28:04

So obviously, he hadn't seen any of these illustrations until they were finished. Is that representative of how you typically collaborate with authors? It's quite a separate endeavour to create the illustrations? Yes, it is. I really couldn't sort of do it with somebody saying, oh, but I see it. She should wear a green dress.

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The author just has to have faith that the illustrator will come up with the goods.

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It was your idea, I think, to make the bear real.

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Why is that important?

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I I made him into a rather sympathetic bear, didn't I?

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The the last the end papers of the bear hunt.

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Show the bear.

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Sort of have has been rejected by the family. Oh, he's he's so disappointed. And you see his shoulders are slumped as he walks along the beach all on his own. He's a disconsolate bear. He was based on a friend of yours, I think. Yes, he was. It was a friend who came through a very, very bad patch. But I ha happily can report all is well now. Is it true that you gave him the original illustration? Yes, I did! I did.

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I don't say I regret it.

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But um

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It was in the days.

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What I have

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quite soon after I had uh it had been published,

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and I had no idea it was sort of going to take off as it has done.

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And had I known, I think he I think I wouldn't have given it to him.

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Tell him. Well, perhaps it's just as well. They were his shoulders after all. It's time for disc number seven. The musical that I really loved and influenced me enormously was Singing in the Rain. And I've seen every one of Gene Kelly's and Fred Astaire's musicals many, many times over.

Helen Oxenbury30:02

Singing in the rain, you're singing in the rain, what a glorious field, and I'm happy again.

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I'm laughing at clouds, so dark up above.

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The sun's in my

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My heart and I ready for love. Let the snow

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Singin' in the Rain performed by Gene Kelly from the original film soundtrack.

Presenter30:37

Helen Oxenbury, we talk a lot, don't we, about the message that children's books might carry and of course about their educational value, which is really important. But I wonder if we talk enough about the pleasure that books bring to children, even to very early readers.

Presenter30:51

Do you think we prioritise that enough?

Presenter30:54

Probably not. No. I really do avoid doing anything on the sort of educational level. I don't want to carry any messages or any uh morals or or

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Anything to do with school. They s associate books with just

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Pure pleasure.

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I always think that half the half the beauty of of a picture book

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is the time that little children spend quietly

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and sort of um concentratedly with parents and teachers.

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They should be a joy, yes. Because, I mean, you know, if they aren't a joy, they're not going to carry on reading books, are they?

Presenter31:37

You once said that as you're getting older you've become more critical of your own work. What stops you from looking at it and enjoying it in the moment?

Presenter31:46

Yes, I I'm so critical that I could almost say, oh.

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I just can't do this any more.

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I I'm never I'm n honestly never really happy when I've done something. I've never quite got what I've imagined in my head.

Presenter32:02

You would be entitled to put your feet up if you wanted to. Why don't you? Oh, gosh, no, I know I d I won't do that. Well, only only if I couldn't do it. But as long as I can do it, I certainly will. I should go mad if I couldn't uh work.

Presenter32:18

All right, Helen. Well, I am about to cast you away to your desert island. How are you imagining it? What do you hope it'll be like?

Presenter32:26

lovely white sand and palm trees and and hopefully, hopefully, some really friendly animals. Oh yes. Yes, that that would be that would be really good for me to look at and uh

Presenter32:39

Play with or something. We'll hear one more track before you go, if you don't mind. This is your eighth disc today. Why are you taking it with you?

Presenter32:47

John and I bought a a house in France. It was quite a run-down farmhouse, but attached to it was a big barn.

Presenter32:56

And

Presenter32:58

Uh we've got a a huge horned grammar phone.

Presenter33:03

John collected seventy-eights and um

Presenter33:08

This barn had a sort of balcony, and I used to work on the balcony and listen to this horn grammophone. The sound was extraordinary.

Presenter33:51

I think I still hear from Bizet's opera The Pearlfishers, performed by Benjamino Gili, conducted by Sir Eugene Gussens.

Presenter33:59

So, Helen Oxenbury, I'm going to send you away to the island. I'm giving you the Bible or another holy book if you would prefer.

Presenter34:06

No, I wouldn't take any.

Presenter34:09

Holy book at all. Okay, well, I will give you the complete works of Shakespeare, and you can also take another book of your choice. What will that be? I read J. G. Farrell some time ago. I think they have brought out a trilogy, three of his books, and it's sort of about the downfall of the British Empire. If they all three came in a sort of slip case, would that be possible? Well, there is precedent, actually, for that. Anne Cleves took the Balkan trilogy by Olivia Manning in 2019 to her island. So this is Troubles, the Siege of Krishnapur, and the Singapore Grip, presumably. Yes, that's right.

Helen Oxenbury34:32

Hmm, what the

Helen Oxenbury34:42

The siege of Krishnapur.

Helen Oxenbury34:44

A poor grip, presumably. Yes, that's right.

Presenter34:47

What about a luxury item? What would you like to take with you? If possible, I'd love to take an unlimited supply.

Presenter34:55

Of white, crisp linen sheets.

Presenter35:00

Under bed?

Presenter35:01

Well, Morrissey took a bed, I happen to know, a whole sumptuous bed. Just imagine when you're all hot and sandy.

Presenter35:09

Just a slip in between.

Presenter35:12

Linen sheets, it would be lovely.

Presenter35:14

All right, Helen. Well, we will allow you a beautiful bed and your linen sheets. And finally, which one track of the eight wonderful discs that you've shared with us today would you save from the waves if you had to?

Helen Oxenbury35:19

And finally

Presenter35:27

Oh, it's ter it's terribly difficult.

Presenter35:30

But I think probably the Gilie.

Presenter35:33

Oh, I think it's so beautiful, and it reminds me of the wonderful times we had in France with the family.

Presenter35:41

Helen Oxenbury, thank you very much for letting us share your desert island discs.

Presenter35:46

Thank you.

Presenter36:00

I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Helen. I'm delighted to think of her playing with all the friendly animals on the island. You'll have heard her talk about her friends and fellow illustrators Quentin Blake, Raymond Briggs and Shirley Hughes. Well, they've all been cast away and you can hear their programmes on BBC Sounds. Next time, my guest will be the medical scientist Professor Sir Jeremy Farrer. I do hope you'll join us.

Speaker 336:36

From BBC Radio 4 a new series from Intrigue, May Day.

Speaker 336:42

On November 11, 2019, James Lemejere was found dead in Istanbul.

Speaker 336:48

He was the ex-British Army officer who helped set up the White Helmets in Syria. Ordinary people trained to save civilians in the aftermath of bomb attacks. The biggest heroes in an ugly war. But lots of people here in the UK say all the White Helmets videos are staged. Part of the greatest hoax in history. I'm Chloe Hajimethau and I've spent the last year investigating the White Helmets and James LeMessurer. Who they are, who he was and why he died.

Speaker 337:21

Subscribe to Intrigue Now on BBC Sounds.