Where did it all go wrong for Dick and Angel? As the Escape To The Chateau couple shut up shop, a look at how their halo slipped SHIRLEY HUGHES'S first graphic novel for adults, Bye Bye Birdie (Jonathan Cape, £12.99), is published on April 2.My heart sinks on encountering characters with names such as Torkon, Lord of Boredore or Elfro Bloggins because I know I will be expected to follow them through long, tortuous quests with little subtlety of characterisation and no jokes. With the notable exception of Philip Pullman's magnificent His Dark Materials trilogy, I tend to avoid stories set in fantasy worlds. Waugh's underlying bleakness passed me by then, as did some of the more decadent implications of the plot. I had never before realised that grown-up books could be so accessible, sophisticated and outrageously funny. Having worked my way along the shelves of the West Kirby Public Library from the children's section to the adult one, I couldn't believe my luck when, at the age of 14, I stumbled on Evelyn Waugh's Decline And Fall and Vile Bodies. Worth pressing a copy on to any school-leaver contemplating back-packing around France and Italy for the first time (the illustrated edition, of course).Īs a child, I loved Joyce Lankester Brisley's cosily reassuring Milly-Molly- Mandy stories. He carries his erudition lightly, never talks down to you and communicates his intense visual pleasure in lucidly accessible prose. He unfolds the story of European art and architecture from the collapse of the Roman Empire to the 20th century. 'About this title' may belong to another edition of this title.Even great fiction might pall after many re-readings, so I would take Kenneth Clark's Civilisation, still one of the most elegantly illuminating of art history books. Shirley received an OBE in 1999 for services to Children's Literature. In 2007 Dogger was voted the public's favourite Greenaway winner of all time. Shirley Hughes has won the Other Award, the Eleanor Farjeon Award, and the Kate Greenaway Medal for Illustration twice, for Dogger in 1977 and for Ella's Big Chance in 2003. Her first book - Lucy and Tom's Day - was published in 1960, and she followed it with, among others, Dogger and the Alfie series. Shirley began to write and draw her own picture books when her children were young. She illustrated other writers' work, including Noel Streatfeild, Alison Uttley, Ian Seraillier, Margaret Mahy and notably Dorothy Edwards's My Naughty Little Sister series. She then embarked on a career as a freelance illustrator in London, where she still lives today.

Shirley was born in West Kirby, near Liverpool, and studied fashion and dress design at Liverpool Art School, before continuing her studies at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art in Oxford.

Moving molly by shirley hughes