LONDON: HOUSE OF ILLUSTRATION, JULY 2014

Earlier this summer I managed to squeeze in a visit to the House of Illustration to see the Quentin Blake: Inside Stories exhibition on one of my fleeting visits to London. The gallery is situated in Granary Wharf behind Kings Cross , so it's perfectly located if you have an hour or so to spare before your train departs.

Quentin Blake is my favourite illustrator: just looking at his work lifts my mood, and he has the best handwriting I've ever seen. For this exhibition, Blake carefully selected seven stories and poems that he has illustrated, and I'm so pleased that he chose The Twits as part of the line-up, as this was - and still is - one of my favourite stories.

 
"If a person has ugly thoughts, it begins to show on the face. And when that person has ugly thoughts every day, every week, every year, the face gets uglier and uglier until it gets so ugly you can hardly bear to look at it." 
"A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely."
'The Twits' by Roald Dahl (1980)

The exhibition runs until 2nd November 2014.