Judith Kerr
Farewell to the author who touched our hearts
The news that Judith Kerr has died, three weeks shy of her 96th birthday, will be just as devastating to parents as children, because reading her books aloud was so enjoyable, so inspirational, that they gave pleasure to just about everyone who happened upon one.
Her stories and illustrations are ageless and timeless, and endlessly uplifting, as indeed was their author.
Her first book, The Tiger Who Came to Tea, is one of the best-selling children’s books of all time; it has never gone out of print and celebrated its 50th birthday last year. Kerr could not possibly have anticipated the longevity or indeed success of a fairly simple – if slightly off the wall – story about a tiger who comes to visit a little girl called Sophie Thomas and her mother, and eats and drinks everything in the house. There
were many theories about the book: that it was a euphemism for the Nazis, that it was a reference to blackouts and wartime food shortages, or that it symbolised the Sixties’ sexual revolution.
No, said Kerr, who found these stories very amusing. It was a simple fiction she created for her daughter, Tacy, because she was frustrated by the banality of the children’s books on offer at the time. And the kitchen that immortalised her most famous character was still largely intact when I visited Kerr’s Chiswick home last year – a room with most of its Sixties fittings still in place that has become so famous, it should surely be preserved for posterity.
It was into this kitchen that Kerr disappeared to fetch me a cup of tea and, later, a whisky. She introduced me to Katinka, a cream-coloured cat who became the inspiration for her book, Katinka’s Tail, published two years ago. “She likes you,” said Kerr sweetly, in her distinctive, mellifluous voice. “She usually hates journalists.”
My own children’s favourite was Mog the Forgetful Cat. I think they partly liked it because much of it was told from Mog’s perspective: a cat “with views” and a surprisingly extensive repertoire of mostly disapproving expressions. Deadpan rather than cloying, like its creator.
Kerr even tackled the taboo subject of pets dying with Goodbye Mog – in which Mog kicks the bucket. It was the perfect example of her appeal: simply illustrated stories that are poignant, but not sentimental. “She had this sort of calmness,” says the author and Children’s Laureate Lauren Child, a long-term friend. “Her writing
‘Not a day went by when she didn’t think of her own life with gratitude’
was very spare,” she remembers. “Which isn’t to say that it’s not profound, it was.
“And there’s real kindness to what she wrote as well. She was a very kind person. She’s just like her books.”
Kerr was both bemused and amused by her popularity. People almost curtsied when they met her, says Child, who recalled going out to dinner with Kerr at a restaurant and being spotted by the Beckhams at another table with their children, who were big fans of hers and keen to meet her. “When we asked for the bill, we were told that David Beckham had already paid it,” says Child, amused. “Then Judith asked us back to her house ‘for a nightcap’. She was always the last one standing. “There was a perception that she was this sweet little old lady, but she was very dry… and she was usually the funniest person in the room.”
Kerr’s remarkable lightness of spirit belied an uneasy past: she was born to a Jewish family in Berlin, and in 1936 the family fled to England, where her schooling was mostly funded by benefactors. One of her books was dedicated to “The one and a half million Jewish children who didn’t have my luck, and all the pictures they might have painted”. Not a day went by, Kerr told me, when she didn’t think of her own life with gratitude. There were many sadnesses: her father committed suicide aged 80. Her husband, the writer Nigel ‘Tom’ Kneale (who wrote the BBC series Quatermass) died in 2006, at which point she took great solace from drawing. “I’d be in despair if I didn’t work,” she said. “It’s lonely, but I’m totally in charge.”
Tacy is now an artist and son Matthew a writer, whose novel English Passengers won the Whitbread prize. Kerr published 37 books; her latest, The Curse of the School Rabbit, comes out next month.
She was an unassailable optimist, with a quiet cheer about her. Like Mog, Kerr will live on forever in spirit. I’m sure she would choose to be toasted merrily with a glass of whisky rather than mourned. “Remember me,” she urged in 2002. “But do get on with your lives.”