Biographical Sketch

Shirley Hughes was born in Lnacashire and describes her early years as "a pre-television childhood. We drew a lot, read books and comics, wrote stories and got up plays." When she was eleven her quiet life was interrupted by Wrold War II and she saw the sky over Liverpool raked with searchlights. "Wartime, when it's not frightening, is deadly dull," she has said. But she enjoyed the regular visits to the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool.

After studying at the Ruskin School of Art in Oxford, she began to work as an illustrator in the 1950s. William Mayne's first two novels were amongst her early commissions.