The undisputed doyenne of children’s illustrators in Britain, Shirley Hughes brought a unique brand of joyous energy to her work. Sole creator of more than 50 picture books, and the jobbing illustrator to innumerable other titles, she excelled at creating infant characters as bouncy as the real thing. Selling more than 12 million copies of her books over a long lifetime, she was a greatly respected figure in the publishing world and immensely popular outside it.
Born the youngest of three sisters, Hughes was born in West Kirby, Merseyside. Her Welsh Methodist father owned a large departmental store in town; the cause of his early death, when Hughes was five, was something she always refused to discuss. But otherwise what she later described as a “rather buttoned-down childhood” passed by happily enough, with much time spent reading, drawing and playing intensely imaginative games with her sisters.
