Now aged 92, Harry Wingfield is on the verge of his first ever retrospective exhibition, which opens at the NewArtGallery in Walsall on 10 February (check date). His name is unfamiliar but his work is instantly recognisable, encapsulating what now seems a poignantly innocent era in the nation’s history. Wingfield played a vital part in creating the distinctive look and design of Ladybird Books. He invented Peter and Jane and illustrated most of the books in the “Key Words Reading Scheme”. In doing so, he drew the pictures that helped teach much of the population to read.

 

He also created an ideal world: a perfectly harmonious, cosy vision of childhood in which Mummy and Daddy never quarrel, Peter and Jane never misbehave, Pat the Dog’s tail wags in perpetual contentment and the sun is always shining. It is a place which perhaps never quite existed, except in the imagination. But like John Major’s fantasy England, where cheerful bobbies ride their bikes, where it is forever teatime and where there is always a cricket match on the village green, Wingfield’s world still exerts a powerful pull on the imagination.  

 

I suspect many people have owned examples of Wingfield’s work for years without really knowing that it was his. I recently discovered a cache of my old Ladybird Books in a cardboard box under the stairs, and most of them turned out to have been illustrated by him. They would be collector’s editions if so many pages were not torn or obscurely scrawled on in bright blue ballpoint pen. The experience of re-reading them is rather painful, such is the abyss separating childhood 40 years ago and childhood now. Here, for example, are a couple of brief passages from a little tome entitled Things We Do:...

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