Edward Ardizzone: Sketches for Friends

'I am not sending you a birthday present as you are to have a bicycle for Xmas. The bicycle will not be entirely yours...' Thus the artist to his son Philip c. 1948, and in token of what to expect there is a drawing of himself on the machine nearly running over a small terrier. Once he discovered the pleasures of drawing,

Ardizzone never stopped till he died, and this deliciqus volume displays a little of the huge pleasure that he gave to others by scattering his graphic entertainments among them. Pen sketches might intrude into his letters - those from the battle-fronts, say, when he was an Official War artist, or those dashed off while he was travelling in exotic places. Hand-written, illustrated diaries chronicle damp days boating on the Thames, or a bibulous visit to Dieppe with his brother David and the glorious Barnett Freedman. An during his last thirty years he might produce magical compositions with the text meandering through scenes done in luscious watercolour: 'Dear Michael. I adore the young ladies of Ockfen. Not adolescent and sharp, but deliciously late-picked ...' and there is the artist gazing his fill at the green-glass-bottle ladies on the banks of the Saar.

Much has been done to celebrate the centenary of Ardizzone's birth, but this is surely the one he would have most appreciated. Judy Taylor (who was for many years his friend and his editor) has encapsulated here his geniality, his eye for the small comedies of everyday life, and his affection for all those lucky friends who shared a companionship of which these sketches are a memento.