Daily Mail

Children’s author and illustrato­r

WHATBOOK. .?

- NICK BUTTERWORT­H

. . . are you reading now?

I’M RE-READING George Orwell’s Coming Up For Air. Orwell is one of my favourites and, of his books, this is my favourite.

The story, set just before the outbreak of World War II, is told by George Bowling, a deliberate­ly unremarkab­le man. He draws attention to the kind of ordinary things that please or irk ordinary people.

Like the fact that, after his morning wash, he hasn’t rinsed the soap properly from his neck and so a slight stickiness around his collar irritates him all morning.

The imminence of war, for the second time in his life, makes him nostalgic for the time of innocence before the first war. The book is a wonderful evocation of that period as he remembers his boyhood.

There’s a timelessne­ss captured in the book. You can smell the dusty grain when he describes the seed merchant’s shop and you feel like you have roamed as carefree as he did through woods and fields in those Edwardian days.

...would you take to a desert island?

J. R. R. TOLKIEN’S The Lord Of The Rings. I was listening to a radio programme about the book in 1967 and it whetted my appetite. I went straight to Caxton’s, our local bookshop, to buy it.

Some say: ‘oh, I don’t like fantasy.’ Well, I’m not that keen on fantasy myself, but this is so much more. It’s an epic tale, with a credible world and superbly nuanced characters, ranging from the almost angelic to the downright diabolical — and everybody in between.

It’s a big story with high stakes. It’s also exciting and frequently very moving.

. . . first gave you the reading bug?

I DIDN’T take quickly to reading, but my lovely mum used to read to me endlessly. Because I struggled early on, she continued to do so when most of my friends had been left to their own devices.

To start with, she’d read the Beatrix Potter stories (my favourite was The Tale Of Samuel Whiskers) but, because she was doing the choosing, I got to know books I’d never have read for myself, such as Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories, Moby Dick and Tom Brown’s School Days.

I grew up in a newsagent’s so there was an abundant supply of comics and graphic novels, too. Swiss Family Robinson is one I loved.

But the book that really grabbed me, the one that transporte­d me to another time and place, was Treasure Island.

It was as if I’d sailed on the Hispaniola with Jim Hawkins and, when he returned from that adventure, older and wiser, I, too, felt that I had grown up a little.

. . . left you cold?

SEVEN Pillars of Wisdom by T. E. Lawrence. It was the set book for my O-level and it bored me to death. I remember a chapter called something like Blowing Up Trains.

To me, it was as dull as ditchwater. Blowing up balloons could have been made more exciting. I never finished the book — and I didn’t pass O-level English lit.

ONe Springy Day (A Percy The Park Keeper Story) by Nick Butterwort­h is published on April 4 by HarperColl­ins Children’s Books at £12.99.

 ?? Illustrati­on: FREDERICK WARNE & Co ?? Childhood tale: Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit
Illustrati­on: FREDERICK WARNE & Co Childhood tale: Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit
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