The book I illustrated for the British Film Institute is released today! Party time.

On Waterstones.com

On Amazon

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“I couldn’t bear it if you had really changed your life. That is something which I have always wanted to do but never could and never will. I shall die with my boots off, the bastard I have ever been.”

The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch

The pattern on this cover is a very loose interpretation of the buds of dogwood blossoms. The Optimist’s Daughter, and a vast amount of Eudora Welty’s work in general, gives a great deal of importance to sense of place and summoning up images of small town Mississippi, and although I spent ages thumbnailing more complicated designs I kept coming back to simple illustrations of native plants.

‘“Up home we loved a good storm coming, we’d fly outdoors and run up and down to meet it,” her mother used to say. “We children would run as fast as we could go along the top of that mountain when the wind was blowing, holding our arms wide open. The wilder it blew the better we liked it.” During the very bursting of a tornado which carried away half of Mount Salus, she said, ‘We never were afraid of a little wind. Up home, we’d welcome a good storm.”

“You don’t know anybody in Baltimore?” they had asked Becky.

But Becky had known herself.’

The Optimist’s Daughter by Eudora Welty

“Mr Lisbon kept trying to lift her off, gently, but even in our ignorance we knew it was hopeless and that despite Cecilia’s open eyes and the way her mouth kept contracting like that of a fish on a stringer it was just nerves and she had succeeded, on the second try, in hurling herself out of the world.”

The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides