Mrs Armitage: Queen of the Road

Blake has the knack of creating sturdily independent minded women, no longer very young and not afraid to take risks, and Anastasia Armitage is one of his most delightful creations. In her latest adventure, Mrs A drives off wearing a flowing scarf Talullah Bankhead style, in a car given to her by Uncle Cosmo, who has bought a motorcycle. Some bumps and bangs later the body of the car is totally dispensable and is thrown on the scrapheap as doughty Mrs Armitage finds she has no need of it, much to the admiration of Uncle Cosmo and his biker friends and her faithful dog, Breakspear.

Like other Blake protagonists Anastasia Armitage is an adult, confounding the often expressed view that children are only interested in child characters. Of course there is something essentially childlike about Mrs Armitage – most adults are far too cautious and inhibited to do what she does – but she is recognizably an adult and even her ‘Mrs’ status points this up. This ability to reach the essentials is a mark of Blake’s genius as a creator of children’s books. Here, Mrs Armitage’s stripped down car is symbolic of Blake’s illustrative and linguistic styles. He reduces things to the bare bones, but invests these with enough vitality to ensure they move and function in an entirely satisfactory way. In so doing, his cartoony illustrations point up what is fundamental to the story and necessary to give his characters life and personality and his readers a whole lot of enjoyment.