John Burningham by Valerie Grove
27th April 1936– 4th January 2019
John Burningham deserved every accolade as a children’s author and illustrator. Ever since Borka, the Adventures of a Goose with No
Feathers (1963), through Mr Gumpy’s Outing (Kate Greenaway Award) to
Motor Miles, the adorable car-driving dog, he pleased not just children but also their parents. Grandparents especially are grateful to him for
Granpa (1984), in which a little girl and her grandfather pottered together companionably. It ends with the inevitable sad drawing of Granpa’s empty chair.
But Burningham’s obituaries barely mentioned his books for grown-ups. He once told me he wasn’t actually very interested in children’s books. ‘I take my work very seriously. But it’s always a bit of a struggle.’ What flowed easily were his large-format adult books. The titles
England, France and Champagne, anthologies all, reflect his magpie mind, his collecting mania. John and his illustrator wife, Helen Oxenbury, worked at home (she in her attic overlooking Hampstead Heath, John downstairs by the french windows looking into a wild garden) were manic collectors. Absolutely nothing in their house was new.
Threadbare rugs, faded brocade curtains billowing over worn floorboards, ancient oak panelling, carved stone fireplaces, gothic doors: everything came from demolished houses and churches; there was a door from Lillie Langtry’s bedroom. A copy of Rubens’s vast Romulus and Remus with lactating wolf came from a Mayfair art dealer who said: ‘Forty quid if you can get it out through the roof,’ which they did.
His grown-up books are just like his house: miscellanea, rattlebags.
England (Cape, £15) amassed the quiddities of the English way of life: be-ribboned Crufts dogs alongside Battersea Dogs’ Home’s poignant ledger of strays; flower shows, hunt meetings, rough sleepers... One comic strip shows everyone vowing to do Christmas differently next year: to invite a lonely neighbour/go to a hotel/take all the food to a hospital...
The France book (Cape, £25) celebrates all things French: the Tour de France, jours de fête, jeux de boules, le camping, les baguettes. In Calais, Burningham noted, the locals refer to British tourists as Les Fuck Offs.
The Oldie warmly reviewed his 2002 book The Time of Your Life: Getting On
With Getting On (Bloomsbury, £7.99), an anthology of ponderings about ageing. The playwright Oliver Goldsmith supplied the fridge-magnet philosophy: ‘I love everything that’s old: old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wine.’ Peregrine Worsthorne wrote candidly of ignoring age: ‘Like Adam, I was born self-centred, and the self does not shrink or wither.’ We get the story of old Churchill being tactfully advised that his fly-buttons were undone. His reply: ‘No matter. The dead bird
does not leave the nest.’ Champagne (Lochawe Books, £25) is my favourite, with a foreword by Joanna Lumley: ‘What a stroke of luck it was to be cast as Patsy in Ab Fab, a character routinely described as “champagneswilling”!’ A copy was presented to everyone attending Burningham’s memorial, along with Hushabye, his baby book with lullaby-playing musical-box attached. This ingenious combination summed up his double appeal; and lavish quantities of champagne ensured a happy celebration of a good life.