Blake was educated at Chislehurst and Sidcup Grammar School. His English teacher, JH Walsh, influenced his ambition to become involved in literature. His first published drawing was for the satirical magazine Punch, at the age of 16. He read English Literature at Downing College, Cambridge (1953-6), received his postgraduate teaching diploma from the University of London, and later studied at the Chelsea School of Art. He gained another teaching diploma at the Institute of Education before working at the Royal College of Art.

Quentin Blake is one of Britain's best-loved and most successful author-illustrators, and was made the first Children's Laureate in 1999. He has won the Whitbread Award, the Hans Christian Andersen Award for Illustration, and the Kate Greenaway Medal. among others.Topics: problem-solving; resilience; women in STEM; positive images of older people; transport; quest stories Quirky! Absolutely bizarre and quirky. Quentin Blake has taken his ink pen and water colors and given us in image and text a cute, quirky little lady who is gifted a car. Well, more a rattletrap vehicle of the 4-wheel version. Once given to her, Mrs. Armitage and devoted dog, Breakspear, hop on board and roll down the road. The energy and mischievous humour of Quentin Blake’s art, as well as its compassionate social awareness, are evident in his award-winning children’s picture book Clown (1995). Onomatopoeia is another clever technique employed by Blake. I do have an issue however with the fact that the verbs “scrrunch” and kerrunch” are spelt incorrectly, extra consonants have been added to lengthen the word and to elongate the sounds to the reader. In addition to this Blake includes nonsensical words such as “dang” and “skrrangg”, although they are effective in creating an atmosphere I think this is ultimately confusing for a young reader.

Breakspear," said Mrs. Armitage, "I think it is time for us to get out of this town." They went down a side road into the country. All around then were trees, and the birds were singing."

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Without dialogue, it has the purity of a silent film, creating movement and telling its delightful story entirely through pictures. After being thrown out with other toys, a clown doll flips itself out of a trashcan, joins a fancy dress parade, is chased by a dog, and is then thrown accidentally into a poor high-rise apartment. There his antics help to quiet a crying child, and he helps the harassed babysitter to tidy the apartment. Then they all go out into the city, against a vivid red sky and grey city buildings, and retrieve the others. By the time the child’s mother comes home, the clown has become a loved toy again. Characteristically, the book also conveys an underlying moral theme, about rejection and connectedness. I suspect that, secretly, he probably does have a magic pencil. Like Hogarth, he defies the limits of the visual by evoking sound: saucepans crash, birds screech, flutes toot. His hairy monsters, weird animals, knowing children and baffled adults threaten to leap off the paper. Noses point, arms flap, legs twist at impossible angles. In Mrs Armitage on Wheels he deliberately gave his heroine a scarf to blow in the wind, to impart the feeling of movement, the breath of air. Movement, freedom, escape are of the essence. And in every case, the open line and feeling of improvisation allow readers space to let their own imagination work on how characters might look and behave. The letter reveals that Uncle Cosmo has given her a car as a present and it is parked outside her house in the street. The pair go to investigate, but Mrs Armitage is not impressed by the old car, but they decide to take it for a drive anyway. The books illustrations are undoubtedly fantastic, Blake’s instantly recognisable graphics have been loved for generations, however, I do believe that it is this that initially attracts the reader to the book rather than his reputation as an author. Blake’s graphics have been coupled with the work of Roald Dahl for many years, Blake is not as talented as Dahl and I think that he is using Dahls success for his own literary career. I finished the book feeling disappointed; I did not think that the story was as entertaining or as imaginative as Dahls work and because of the association with Dahl I had initial expectations.

He was born in 1932, reading English at Cambridge, then studying teaching at the University of London, and life classes at Chelsea Art School. He has always made his living as an illustrator, as well as teaching for over twenty years at The Royal College of Art, where he was head of the Illustration department from 1978 to 1986. His first drawings were published in Punch at the age of sixteen, and he continued to draw for Punch, The Spectator and other magazines for many years, while entering the world of children's books with his first book as an illustrator, A Drink of Water and Other Stories by John Yeoman, in 1960. Blake’s dynamic pen strokes typically create odd, unruly characters, almost always seen in concert with children, rendering them in a sprightly manner. As Sue Hubbard, an art critic writing in The Independent, has observed: ‘His drawing is wonderfully free and playful, the colour bleeding with carefree abandon over the ink outlines to give a sense of movement and vitality’. He is now one of Britain’s most popular artists, and so recognizable have Blake’s illustrations become, that his gently anarchic images have spread to greetings cards. In 1999 he was appointed the first Children’s Laureate, and his achievement has recently been marked by a major retrospective exhibition: ‘Quentin Blake: Fifty Years of Illustration’, held at Somerset House in London in 2004. His work was also a major part of the British Council's 'Magic Pencil' Exhibition which began touring the world in 2002, and there are apparently future plans for a Quentin Blake Gallery.

Jacqui is played by Claire Goose, a 48-year-old British actress who played Tina Seabrook in Casualty. Mrs Armitage on Wheels is a pleasure to read aloud with a class. The prose flows smoothly off the tongue, and the refrains get children joining in. They love the onomatopoeia (crash, crunch, thud!) and the listing of bike modifications which are used with comic effect. The language, which seems simple at first, builds increasingly into adventurous words and phrases which mirror the growing complexity of Mrs Armitage’s bike: don’t be surprised if your class start to speak of ‘complete tool kits’, ‘faithful dogs’ or of things needing ‘a bit of extra oomph’ after repeat readings! Mrs. Armitage meets life with a carefree attitude, and in this particular story, her car takes the brunt of the consequences. Blake’s illustrations match the story’s freewheeling heroine, and work well with the crash, bang, boom noises that accompany each accident. Every time the car gets a little worse for the wear, Mrs. Armitage shrugs it off, casually dismisses the incident, and (with her faithful hound) continues on her road trip adventure. An amusing book, with as one would expect from Quentin Blake, quirky drawings. Mrs Armatage wakes up one morning to find a letter from her uncle Cosmo. She reads the letter to her faithful dog Breakspear over breakfast.