Nothing reminds me of my childhood like the illustrations of Arthur Rackham. My father’s bookcase contained a treasure trove of his images and so, rather like the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood, I was destined not to escape them! They were lying in wait, ready to haunt and shape my imagination!
Rackham was the greatest star from The British Golden Age of book illustration (1890’s to the First World War). His pictures are never cutesy; but instead, at their best, have a dark Romantic force:
They are dream-like, with all the chaos of dreams – but they are also magical, containing within them, all the imaginative possibility of the fairytale.
