Biography

I was born in 1950, the eldest of four boys. My Great-Aunt Dora always claimed that as a child I was watching a courtroom drama on television when suddenly I said, “That is what I want to be when I grow up”. Since I read law at Oxford and became a barrister, the story is probably true, but I have no recollection of ever having wanted to be a lawyer when I was a child – I wanted to be a writer. At the age of 12 as I lay ill in bed with mumps I started a detective novel in a red exercise book: with my recovery writing ceased and the exercise book disappeared. So far as I can recall at no time prior to 1991 did I have the slightest ambition to be an illustrator or artist, although I have a vague recollection of having (at the age of 10) a picture of a Viking ship in an exhibition in a local library: a few illustrated stories I did when very young have survived (my spelling was dreadful).

Storytelling really entered my life with my marriage (to the abstract painter Susan Haire - www.susanhaire.com) our move to a rambling old vicarage in a Kent village and the birth of our three sons, Julius, Alexander and Benjamin.

When very young Julius was content with a few stories repeated night after night, but became more and more demanding until each night he demanded a new story with his favourite characters: Snuggle the cat, the rabbit Scrooey-Looey, Boris the skull, Griselda the witch and the dim daft dwarves (Julioso, Aliano and Benjio). Julius would say which characters he wanted in each night’s story and how the story began. I had to improvise from there. I would start the story without any idea how it would end, and developed various tricks for getting out of impossible situations.

Snuggle was the family cat. His name was always totally inappropriate. When a tiny kitten I did not dare to pick him up without first hiding my hands in a pullover: otherwise he would wrap himself around my hand, sink in four sets of tiny claws and bite my fingers. The story in the Land of Lost Hair of him savaging a large black dog is based on fact. The real incident of Snuggle and the Vicar’s Chickens is rather more bloody than in the story: as well as getting three chicks he attacked the Vicar’s wife: she had to go to hospital for a tetanus injection: the editor of the story felt that I should tone it down.

The rabbit Scrooey-Looey was inspired by a glove puppet which I used in magic shows for the boys and their friends: with his big red mouth it seemed only natural for him to be the greediest rudest rabbit that has ever lived.

Boris was based on a skull in my Uncle Mike’s magic equipment. When I was a child Uncle Mike would put on a brilliant magic show every Christmas. As a magician I was rather useless. When I made Boris float through the air on a silk handkerchief the children would point to the metal rod beneath the silk scarf and hoot with derision.

As their names suggest Julioso Aliano and Benjio were based on the boys (not their better qualities). Griselda, Boris and the three dim daft dwarves formed a family (a very dysfunctional family) which mirrored the family in The Old Vicarage.

The legal recession in 1991 gave me the time to write the stories down. Then I had a problem. Children’s stories need illustrations. Where was I to find an illustrator? In the end I thought I might be able to manage a few pin men, and sitting at the kitchen table the boys and I all did illustrations for the stories. To begin with Alexander’s illustrations (he was aged 6) were rather better than mine, but I kept trying and under the vigilant eye of my wife (a professional artist and lecturer in colour) I developed a style of my own.

From 1992 I told the stories as part of the children’s events of a festival of music (which is based on The Old Vicarage and the church next door).

Between 1992 and 1995 seven stories were published each with between 18 and 24 full page black and white illustrations: in 1992 Snuggle and the Vicar’s Chickens (republished in 1994 because I was not happy with the quality of the original illustrations) Snuggle and The Land of Lost Hair, Boris and the Dim Daft Dwarves. Scrooey-Looey and the Bands of Evil, in 1993 Scrooey-Looey and the Creatures of the Forest, in 1994/95 Mrs. G’s Best Balloons and The Crystal Key.

It was great to see children as Globerous Ghosts, Mystic Mummies and Venomous Vampires : in Katie’s version the Scary Scots became Lord and Lady Macbeth.

In 2000/2001 Katie edited the text of eleven of the stories and in 2002 I was offered an exhibition for 117 of my gouache illustrations at The Chapel Gallery, Hall Place, a beautiful Tudor mansion in the London Borough of Bexley. This provided the catalyst for the publication of “Ramion” (which contained all four stories in the exhibition ) and the four individual stories, “The Land of Lost Hair”, “The Vicar’s Chickens”, “The Crystal Key”, and “Creatures of the Forest”. Every Saturday of the exhibition I told one of the stories.

The second series (published in 2004) comprises “Realm of Ramion” (the collected stories) and the individual stories “The Dim Daft Dwarves”, “The Bands of Evil”, “The Magic Magpie” and “The Cruel Count”. The Count invented the complete solution for the discipline of little boys: he ate them. This fearsome tale was a favourite. I told it at a cub camp down on the water meadow in 1994 and at the 1995 Shoreham Festival.

The third series (published in 2005) comprises “Swords of Ramion” (the collected stories) and the individual stories “The Seven Stones of Iliana”, “The Black Marchesa”, Gary the Frog Prince” and “The Embodiment of Evil”. Narg the Nanny was based on a nanny who mistreated Julius when young : she would drag him along the street to nursery school, yanking him up when he stumbled. I told the story of Narg at the 1996 Shoreham Festival : she is the only person in the stories whom Griselda actually succeeds in eating.