British Illustrators 34: Judith Kerr

The late Judith Kerr, who passed away in 2019, will always be remembered for the ever popular “The Tiger who came to Tea”. She also created the Mog series, and wrote “When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit”. She had personal experience to draw on for that book, since she was born in Weimar Germany, but her parents both knew that Nazi success in the 1933 elections could spell potential disaster for a Jewish family such as themselves, and the family moved to France before settling in Britain.

Judith Kerr became a naturalised British subject, and married Nigel Kneale. That name might not mean a great deal to you if you’re not British or of a certain age, but he wrote “Quatermass” which was the first TV science fiction serial to gain mass appeal in the UK, and led to 3 spin off films. Their son, Matthew Kneale is no mean writer himself. He wrote an excellent historical novel “English Passengers” which I can thoroughly recommend. Coming back to “The Tiger Who Came To Tea”, it was published in 1968, and has remained hugely popular ever since. Judith Kerr created the story after a visit to the zoo with her three year old daughter. It took her a year to make the book, and it has since become one of the best selling children’s books of all time.