Like Sir Quentin Blake and Helen Oxenbury, Ralph Steadman is still very much alive. Unlike them, he isn’t best known as an illustrator of children’s books. As early as his student days in the 60s, Ralph Steadman was contributing to satirical magazine Private Eye, and the Daily Telegraph in the UK, and the New York Times and Rolling Stone in the US.
Since then he has completed a huge body of work including satirical and political cartoons, album covers, posters for the Royal Shakespeare company, postage stamps for the Royal Mail, and also illustrations for editions of books including Treasure Island and Alice in Wonderland – two of my favourite children’s books of all time.
I agonised for a while over which illustration I wanted to copy, but in the end I decided that Ralph Steadman’s anarchic, almost explosive style lends itself more naturally to Alice in Wonderland. (Although I also love his Treasure Island illustrations too!)
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