At an early age, Michael Foreman uncovered a passion for drawing, and since illustrating his first children’s picture book 1961, he has become one of Britain’s best loved illustrators. The 50th Anniversary edition of ‘The General’ marks an exciting time for Foreman, a nominee for the Hans Christian Andersen Award, and the subject of an exhibition at the National Army Museum. Michael is married to Louise and they have two sons. They divide their time between London and St. Ives.

In this interview he talks to Kim Toohey about his books, his ongoing collaboration with Michael Morpurgo, and a career which spans five decades.

What was your first reaction when you were told ‘The General’ was to be reprinted fifty years later?

The first reaction is that it IS fifty years, [laughs]. I suppose there aren’t many cases when the writer is still around fifty years on - fortunately it was done when we were very, very young. But I was really pleased, not just because it was the first book, but because it completely changed what was going to happen to me. I didn’t think of myself as someone who would be creating books, because books hadn’t been part of my life - as a child I didn’t have any books.

When I left Art College, I assumed I would become a painter. I was doing very large abstract paintings. That was what attracted me to Cornwall, because that's where my heroes were working. But after a while, I found I was getting more pleasure from responding to stories -particularly topical issues in the newspapers - than I was from covering acres of canvas with paint.

So you were a born illustrator?

Well it just seemed to be part of everyday life – whatever I did was food for the book, whereas the painting was abstract, in both senses of the word. I think the drive of the deadline helped. You couldn’t mess around. You had to get down to it. One editor used to say to me, ‘I don’t want it good, I want it by 7:30’ [laughs]. The downside was by 7:30 the following day that work had been thrown away, put in the bin, wrapped around fish and chips.

Did that bother you?

 Well, after a while, I thought that if I was creating books, the would  have a longer life than a daily paper. I started approaching publishers to get commissions for book covers.  I liked book jacket illustration.  I’d read the book, come up with an image that would set the story up in one go.

That work  brought me into contact with publishers. I would see the books they were doing andI  fancied having a go. I was a student, so I had time to produce a book. However, I hadn’t written a children’s book, so I didn’t have any background.

How did that interest to produce a children’s book, lead to the creation of 'The General'?

I think the greatest concern to people of our age, at that time, was the notion that we could get blown up at any moment. There was no story was more important than that. And yet, although children were aware of the threat, that story wasn’t featured in children’s books. I thought if there was a simple way of putting a message about the crisis out there then that would be a good thing. So I did some drawings, not much of the story, just the drawings.

And how did the book come to be published?

I had a colleague at the art school who was Hungarian. He’d come over in ‘56 from the revolution. They only contact this Hungarian had when he came to London was the wife of an English publisher. He said, ‘I’ll get her to invite you for tea - bring your drawings along.’ So my wife Janet and I went along for tea. she looked at the drawings, liked them and when her husband came home from work, he also liked them. He invited me to take them into the office the next day so that he could show them to the other director, who happened to be Sir Herbert Read, the famous art critic and founder of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. It was fortuitious that the subject was just right for him. He said, ‘If you go away and write the story, we’ll have another look at it.’ And Janet – who was properly educated - wrote the text, and they published the book.

To put the book in context, ‘The General’ was published during the Cold War, in the early years of the Vietnam War and just before the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Yes, a few months before.

So it was a terrifying time.

Yes. I remember sitting in the student bar at the Royal College of Art during the missile crisis thinking that this week it could be all over.

And yet 'The General' is  a deeply optimistic story. Is this a timely reissue?

Well I don’t think the threat has gone away. Unfortunately, the theme has remained timely.

A reviewer in ’61 suggested ‘The General’ is a ‘sort of Age of Anxiety wish fulfilment’ with regard to air pollution concerns. Were you conscious of environmental issues back in that tumultuous period ?

Yes. I think the pollution was linked with the nuclear situation as well. The pollution from that was very obvious.

I felt  dismay when I read that review... fifty years later and not much has changed! Does that frustrate you, or are you eternally optimistic?

Well, I’m optimistic in that the issue is part of everybody’s consciousness now. There are many misconceptions, but at least everyone is concerned . It’s apparent that everybody including children can do something about it. In fact children respond immediately to making their own little bit of the environment better in any way that they can.

I’ve shown ‘The General’ to a few illustration students who are charmed by its strong design elements and retro colour palette. And the bright red fox. The fox got a rave review. Who were your biggest artistic influences at the time?

At that time it was George Grosz - particularly in 'The General'- and Ben Shahn.

I didn’t know about Ben Shahn. That makes sense though...

.. particularly his black and white technique, his pen drawings with very jagged lines. In fact I copied him in that he used the wrong end of a pen for drawing. But it was really his political concerns that I appreciated. Rather than depict anything grandiose or beautiful his subject was the street - the ruined buildings, factories, war.

Nick Sharratt cited one of your illustrations from ‘The General’ as being ‘etched on his brain’ since childhood. I don’t know if you’ve seen that – a Times Interview on ‘Stories that linger a lifetime’. The image of the General sitting in the field of flowers chewing a piece of grass is Sharratt’s favourite. He sort of wished the book back into existence - in the interview he stated ‘The General’ should be reissued - that was in 2007!

Really? That was very kind of him!

Were you aware that ‘The General’ had an enduring fan base?

I think for my generation, it was probably the first children’s book that people bought for themselves. People who were a year or two older than us bought it for their children. I think that in itself makes it enduring. I know that when we moved house four or five years ago we determined to get rid of lots of books, including the books our boys grew up with, except the significant ones. I think we got rid of two! [laughs]. Because they were all significant!

So do you have a particular painting or image etched on your mind – something that’s left an indelible impression that you’ve carried with you?

What, from a childhood?

Yes, or from art school.

I can’t think of one. At art school I was very lucky to go to a provincial, traditional art school, where we drew from life, drew from a skeleton and studied anatomy, perspective, history of architecture, lettering – the whole thing was so traditional.

You have illustrated 180 books ...

I think it’s more like 280 books! [laughs] Well, 250 - I’ve written about 70 of them.

Ah, I’ll be pleased to update that figure! So how do you keep each story fresh?

Each story is different. I’ve never done a series of anything– certainly not more than three or four of anything. I think if you respond to the story, and impose your style on the work, you then attract a variety of writers, which in turn provides a variety of subject matter. So each time you have to do new research, to find a new way of doing something.

 I like to work on at least three projects at once, so they overlap. I like one to be black and white, and the other two to be different age groups.

Which makes it different each time, as you take a break from one?

Yes, and it makes it different every day. When you get stuck on one project, you just put it in a drawer and work on one of the others for a while When you the one that was a problem is out of sight for a while, you later see it with fresh eyes, and you can see immediately what was wrong.

Do you have that moment when a problem starts to solve itself ?

Yes, in the sleepless early hours of the morning, when something’s bugging me. I can’t go to sleep until I know what I’m going to do about it. It may not be the solution, but I know what I’m going to do when I get up.

Also for twenty years I did a huge amount of travelling, and I’ve never take anything to read, because I wanted to be bored. When you are bored your brain makes work for itself. That’s when I would get ideas for stories. Sometimes they would be connected to the place I was in.

 So, it’s like giving yourself a break from life, in order to think.

Well, it’s perfect, because you’re kind of nowhere.

Would you describe the processes you go through when working on a book as author and illustrator, from start to finish?

I always get started in a little notebook. It’s a habit that I learnt the very first day I went to art school. When I was 12 I attended a Saturday morning art class. The teacher gave us each a little sketchbook and pencil and took us out to draw the world around us - an orchard in fact, to draw trees. I absolutely loved it. Today I still draw and draw in my sketchbook.

Then I plan out the book in double page spreads - 13 pages probably - with little scribbles for the characters. There will be a few versions of this, until I’m more or less happy with it. Then I’ll draw it at full size on a tracing pad, get type set up, lay that out then just transfer that tracing to the watercolour paper. That’s it.

So you work out the layout of the text yourself?

 Yes, because the text is going on the pictures. If it’s outside the pictures that’s a different thing all together, but for picturebooks I quite like the text to be in the picture.

And you can tell the art director how it’s going to be?

Well I was art director on several magazines.

Excellent draughtsmanship is a key signature of your illustration work, and I believe you honed your technical skills while working as a commercial artist. In what way have advances in printing and information technology impacted your work?

Hardly at all. I don’t use the computer for anything other than research (which saves me a lot of trips to the library) Every bit of my illustration is done by hand on paper.

Do you scan work to send to publishers?

Very rarely. - I don’t have an agent and I like to keep in close contact with the editor and the designer - in as much as there are still designers in publishing houses. They seem to be a dying breed, unfortunately.

Cornwall-based Illustrator/animator Jago Silver was asked by a student if there was anyone’s work he doesn’t like and he responded that ‘too many children’s books are watered down versions of other illustrator’s styles, like Quentin Blake rip-offs, or Michael Foreman rip-offs.’ I’m guessing you’ve heard this sort of thing before?

Well you can see the ‘rip-offs’ of Quentin’s work. It’s deceptive; It looks dashed off

But of course, it is NOT ‘dashed off’ –

Well he draws many, many times.

So if you see any truth in that assertion, why do you think that’s the case?

My beef is that publishers today are run by the marketing department, not by the editorial department. So if they see anything doing rather well, they want their list as much as possible to look ‘just like that’. And with fewer and fewer independent bookshops, there’s less and less choice - less and less opportunity for people doing unusual books to get them seen.

Back to your books - you use a lot of blue. All the Michael Foreman books I have are predominantly blue. It’s a blue that isn’t limited to a sea or sky scene. Is this a conscious choice or does the colour evolve as you work?

Yes – it’s something which everybody comments on. I do use rather a lot of blue. I think partly it goes back to when I was at art school, studying the Impressionists. When they painted shadow they would make it cool with blue not black, brown not grey. I think to put black in something kills it and shadows aren’t black anyway. But also, as you mentioned, I do paint a lot of sky, partly because you can tell a lot about atmosphere from the sky but also because it’s a place to put the text. If you like to put text in the picture, you need space to place it. That’s why there’s more sky in my pictures than many other books. Also I do set a lot of my stories by the sea because of the subjects I write about, and it’s the place I like to be.

In ‘The General’ there’s a lot of white space, which may be attributed to the design trends of the time. Is that something you’ve done in other books?

No, that’s an interesting point. My son sometimes says, ‘Oh do it on a white page, Dad, ‘cause it’s much quicker!’ [laughs] I think that you’re right that the earlier ones used more white space.

When I was working on books for the slightly older age group I felt they needed to be in a setting, not just on a piece of paper. And particularly because the place is sometimes more important than any of the characters. Even a fairy story is more powerful - more mysterious - if it’s set in a real place.

Yes! Actually, I went to Germany last Christmas because I was influenced by you, having read that you like to draw from the actual location.

Your stories present a sympathetic view of the world. I’m not sure if that’s one of the reasons that there is so much blue – such an optimistic colour! Yet in spite of the optimism, there’s not a lot of sugar-coating going on, especially considering some of your books are aimed at young children. Or have I missed the fluffier Foreman books?

Hopefully there are no fluffy Foreman books! [laughs]

On that note, ‘War Boy: The Michael Foreman Exhibition’ is currently showing at the National Army Museum. Do you get lots of feedback from younger readers about the honesty you portray in your books?

Yes, I received this [school project on Michael Foreman] from a girl yesterday. I’m not sure how old she is, but right at the end she says she’d like to create books and that I’ve shown her it can be done by ordinary people.

She says here, ‘my favourite line in the book comes at the end when Will is about to die’, then, ‘Michael Foreman has written many touching books....’

 So, as a young boy you grew up during WWII in a house without books. Yet you’ve made writing and illustrating books a way of life. Free from preconceptions about children's books, what sort of things did you discover when you started illustrating them?

It was only really when I started getting commissions to illustrate some classics that I looked to see how they’d been done before. That's when iI came across Arthur Rackham and such people. The challenge was to bring something that wasn’t already there and I felt the only thing I could bring was my experience, not of the literature but of the places. So that’s when I realised it was important to set my books in the real world.

That opportunity came about, partly because I was being commissioned to visit different countries for magazines that I was working on. Because I was doing a lot of travelling a publisher would think ‘Oh, maybe Michael Foreman’s been there already!’ and they would ask me about it. Sometimes I would say, ‘No, but I’d love to go!’ I’d go, even if what they wanted me to do was rather mundane because I’d be able to bring back something that would be useful material.

A very good carrot!

Yes.

Such were the days!

I believe ‘Billy the Kid’, about a war pensioner, is a favourite book of yours. I know this is treading over old ground, but could you tell us how you came to work with Michael Morpurgo?

Yes. First of all, we have two versions of this. Michael’s version goes back a few years before mine, to when we met in a publisher’s office. Michael hadn’t been published but he was showing some of his stories to the publisher that day. His wife had done some drawings and I just happened to be in the reception at the same time. I saw the drawings on the desk, looked at them and said that I really, really liked them. And that was it.

We didn’t meet again until ten years later in a school in Cornwall. We exchanged phone numbers and I said, ‘Next time you’re in Cornwall give me a call’. He did and we went out for the evening. At the end of the evening he gave me a brown envelope with a story in it. I didn’t want to illustrate that story because it was set in Venice, and I’d just finished a story set in Venice. It was too close. However, I didn’t want to say ‘no’ to him, because I knew he was a good writer.

I said no to the Venice book but suggested we do a book about King Arthur together. Michael lived in Devon and I was in Cornwall, and the whole Lyonesse thing centred on the Isles of Scilly, where Michael goes every summer. So we did a book called The Sleeping Sword and found that we liked working together.

The obvious book to do after King Arthur was ‘Robin Hood’. We were sitting one day in Sherwood Forest - I was drawing some trees - and he asked, ‘What shall we do next?’ I said that I had always wanted to do a book about football – the way it was when I was a little boy, before footballers were millionaires. He asked why and I said, ‘Because it was a good period, in the 1950s after the war’.

He hadn’t seen a big match, so I took him to a night game at Chelsea. He said, ‘Now I’m here, what?’ I pointed to the director’s box to all the Chelsea pensioners in their red uniforms. And I pointed behind the far goal, and in the crowd there was one Chelsea pensioner, in his red uniform. I said, ‘He buys his own tickets’. Michael said, ‘Why doesn’t he sit in the free seats with all his mates?’ I said, ‘Because he wants to see the game from the same spot where he used to watch the game from his dad’s shoulders before the war.’ So that’s the story. We’re telling this guy’s life story – from before the war, watching the game from his dad’s shoulders and then as he went through the Second World War.

When you work with a writer - Michael Morpurgo in particular – do you have a mutual relationship where you discuss a book concept?

Yes, we talk very regularly, and he tells me what he’s planning early on, if he wants me to be involved. Like the Savoy [Kaspar: Prince of Cats] project?

Yes. We’ve just finished worked on a book for Templar – ‘Not Bad for a Bad Lad’. I think that was my idea – actually. I got the idea from a plumber. We started talking about a house he’d bought in Suffolk near a prison. For generations the prison has been involved in breeding a particular breed of horse. Michael and I started talking about it and like it does with this type of project it just grows and grows in whatever direction.

Morpurgo has a really strong voice.

e just writes brilliant pictures, you can read it – you can hear his voice, and you can see the picture you want to do. And it’s real. It’s not fantasy, it’s not wizards. Even if it’s a different period, a child of today somehow evolves in it.

Would you enlarge on that?

Well, the book he’s writing at the moment is again set in the Second World War. The story is narrated by an old lady, in a nursing home reflecting back through her memories. Just two days ago I got a re-write from Michael. The person listening to the story is one of the nurses in the care home, but now Michael has introduced the son of this carer, and it has transformed the story into something more relevant. So here’s a child of the present day, relating to something that happened sixty years ago, first hand. I love the cross-generational aspect of the book.

I love to do that... a child and the grandfather, for instance. The child has more space, if the parents are not in the way. Children can’t do much under parental control, whereas with the generation before, there is a looser connection, and they can both spread their wings a bit more.

That’s an interesting alternative to the orphan child.

Yep.

There’s a synergistic relationship between text and image in your work. Has it always been a conscious decision to expand the text with pictures, rather than mimic the manuscript?

 Yes. If it’s my own text, the text gets shorter. I just get rid of words because you’re telling that part of it in the pictures. But sometimes I like to tell another kind of story in the pictures – like the one about the disabled child, ‘Seal Surfer’. There is no mention in the text that this child is disabled in any way.

Did you start out with text first in that particular book?

 I try and tell the whole thing in pictures first of all, but you just need some text to knit the thing or span a period of time.

You are known for keeping lots of sketchbooks, filled with preparatory work, plein air drawings, people, objects, etcetera. Yet you’ve chosen to work in what must be the most unforgiving medium – watercolour. Do you have lots of rejected pictures?

I try and rescue things – I’m very conscious of waste, and partly, what I like about watercolour is that you do have accidents, and by trying to harvest what you can from the accident, you end up with a picture you hadn’t visualised. So, you surprise yourself. I don’t like drawing something and then filling it in. I like the paper to be wet, so the colour makes its own progress across the wet area. like the magic of the materials doing something on their own, obviously you’re partly controlling it, but it’s an unknown thing each time, which keeps it fresh for me. But it is forgiving in a way, because I use pastel. So as a last resort you can cover over some errors.

Do you think this method helps you push out boundaries, and add to the mystique of an image?

 Yes, well one thing I can’t get to grips with is this total computer thing with an outline that’s filled in like a box of Smarties. [laughs]

My guess is your manuscripts have not spent time sitting around in a slush pile. How does a Michael Foreman book make it to print? I know you’ve worked with many different publishers.

 Yes, they’re all different. It’s obviously easier to develop a relationship if you’re with the same editor over a period of years. So if they stay in place, then that’s great. Walker Books are very good on the design side – they take tremendous care. Some publishers treat design as a much less important factor. They are inclined go along with whatever trend is current. And formats are changing all the time. Big books might be trendy and then small books…

And they don’t like books sticking out from the shelf!

Yes, that’s driven by the chain booksellers. For me, each book is a different animal, the story is unique and it’s sad that they all have to get squashed into a certain shape and size.

How does it usually work with commissions, does an editor call you or do you initiate projects?

I suppose it’s a mixture. Usually one book develops into the next project. It will have come up in conversation we’ve had while working on an earlier book. Sometimes there are certain books I want to have with Publisher A rather than Publisher B because of the nature of the book, how I’d like it to be produced, or handled. Some publishers like a book, for what they refer to as a ‘message’ and they’ve got a reputation for that kind of book. Others may prefer ‘fireworks’ and fun. And of course there are the classics.

At the moment I’m doing four baby books, which is a first for me. They’ve developed out of books for a different age group, where the publisher thought it would also work for younger children. That’s a format lead. The challenge is to find a way of doing it that’s different!

 You’re spread across so many different genres in children’s books. Is there anything that really stands out as being your favourite?

For a while I really wanted to do the classics. I really, really loved doing those. But in very recent years, partly because of the Foreman Exhibition, it seems that in the time I’ve got left, it should be about what is special to my generation. I didn’t realise how that was a piece of me. Many of the books that I’ve written have been because of the child I was, and the circumstances.

Which, may be why they are so intrinsically honest.

[At this point, a cat with an extraordinary purr, which sounds like a pigeon, wanders in. Louise, Michael’s wife, explains he’s been sleeping upstairs all day].

Hey Charlie! This is Charlie – the neighbour’s cat. He’s the model for the Savoy book. He loves posing!

[Much fussing over Charlie ensues before Louise ushers him home].

So after you’ve made all these sketches, where do you create your finished art?

Upstairs, in a little studio. Would you like to see? [

I take up the kind offer of a studio tour. It has a large window facing desk, drawers full of well organised art supplies and a wall of books adorned with masks].

So you look out the window while you’re working?

 I’m the Neighbourhood Watch! This book [Michael points to a pile of artwork from the ‘Soggy the Bear’ books by Philip Moran] is written by an old friend, who’s often the grandfather figure in lots of the books I do. He was a fisher boy, went into the merchant navy, became the skipper of a couple of cruise ships and then he ended up being captain of research vessels that went all around the world. He got pensioned off, went back to St. Ives and bought this place.

 Anyway, he got pretty ill about five years ago. I visited him in hospital where he was bored out of his brain and I said he should write the story about some of the characters in his house, which has a chair full of characters [toys] he has rescued from the sea! He wrote a story, while he was in hospital, about a teddy bear that got lost at sea. I liked it, did the pictures and took it to a publisher who wouldn’t publish it because it was too colloquia. So a local businessman said he would do it. He sent the prints off, and then he went bust, which was unfortunate. But the bookshop in St. Ives was so keen to get the book that they paid for printing and became the publisher.. It’s brilliant that this one bookshop has done this - Independents make a huge difference! They even did ‘Soggy the Musical’ at a children’s theatre.

You must be very pleased to have illustrated books about St. Ives, being a local yourself for much of the year.

Does it get sunny here in your London studio?

Yes, in the mornings. The one in Cornwall is great; it overlooks the bay.

That must help you to start work. Are you very disciplined about the way you start your day?

 I start work as early as possible and work as long as possible.

[We move into a smaller storage room which is filled with more books and a steep pile of A6 sized sketchbooks.]

These are my sketchbooks – some I pull apart to group pictures together. These ones are mostly children, children with animals, different places, carrying stuff, children fishing, one of my boys fishing, Bali....

Bali made quite an impression on you. If there was a place to go back to - apart from St. Ives - where would you go?

Bali. And Sikkim. I really liked Sikkim.

 Where you lived in the Palace?

Yes. In fact, the Queen, as was, was here in the Museum last week.

Yes, you currently have the exhibition at the National Army Museum. What’s next on the horizon?

This is the next one [shows pages] of Michael’s - the one with the horses at the prison. And here’s that cat again!

Well, thank you so much for talking to Write Away, about ‘The General’, your work and for showing your studio. I wish you the best in your nomination for the Hans Christian Andersen Award.

We concluded the meeting as we had started - by looking over some of Foreman’s books. He has a 1961 edition of ‘The General’, and expresses immense satisfaction over the quality of the 2010 edition. We look at pop-up picture books, non-fiction books on Japanese culture and finished spreads he ‘worked on over Christmas’ for the latest ‘Soggy’ book, complete with Hokusai inspired seascape! Additionally, he is Art Director for Ambit literary magazine, (no one is paid) in which work by contemporaries Peter Blake and David Hockney sits alongside work by previously unpublished students. It’s another labour of love which has endured, like many of the stories and images created by Michael Foreman over the past five decades, since his first children’s book, ‘The General’ was published.

2010-02-15