Quentin Blake

As you might have guessed by now I kind of like sketching. Near the top of that heap of admiration and likeness would be the work of caricaturists and satirists, in particular the work of Quentin Blake, Gerald Scarfe and the lesser known Fritz Wegner.

Wegner illustrated my favourirte kids book The Fattypuffs and The Thinifers by Andre Maurois, which  if you’ve not read it is the fantastic story of two brothers, one thin, one fat, who travel to an imaginary world separated into the fat, pleasant and generous Fattypuffs and the thin, energetic and mean spirited Thinifers.

Quentin Blake is probably most famous for his illustrations of Roald Dahl’s books, most notably Charlie and the Chocolate factory, The BFG and Matilda… and I can’t imagine anyone else being more perfectly suited to the task than Blake whose  anarchic and unruly illustrations perfectly capture the comical, semi-surreal world’s created by Dahl…. Gerald Scarfe is a political satirist and cartoonist who has also worked as a theatre designer. His work is biting and vicious and at the same time funny, poignant and irreverent. What’s more incredible is that these guy’s have all been at it for more than fifty years apiece and are all still working as we speak. So I guess you can expect some satirically inspired sketches here soon…..

Udo di Fabio

This is Udo di Fabio. Udo is a grey haired man with glasses. He loves to play golf and buckaroo and Udo’s favourite food is beans on toast and boiled winkles. Udo’s mum was a basketball player and his father a train driver. He likes dressing up in suits and his favourite colour tie is blue. Udo wears black suits and sometimes navy. He’s Argentinian but he doesn’t like sausages. His best friend is John. John also likes blue ties but his hair is brown.

Crisis, what crisis?

Nick Clegg on David Cameron’s decision to put Britains interests first……

‘Cameron’s made us a pygmy in the world’

‘There’s nothing bulldog about Britain hovering somewhere in the mid Atlantic, not standing tall in Europe, not being taken seriously in Washington.’ warning that the UK, ‘ was retreating further to the margins’ of Europe.

The pope and the politicians

The Pope on his first official visit to Germany last month, with everybody smiling, but only small smiles.