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Roald Dahl and Quentin Blake make a perfect partnership of words and illustrations, but when Roald started writing, he had many different illustrators.

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Quentin started working with him in 1976 (the first book he illustrated was The Enormous Crocodile, published in 1978) and from then on they worked together until Roald’s death. Quentin ended up illustrating all of Roald Dahl’s books, with the exception of The Minpins.

To begin with, Quentin was a bit nervous about working with such a very famous author, but by the time they collaborated on The BFG, they had become firm friends. Quentin never knew anything about a new story until the manuscript arrived. ‘You’ll have some fun with this,’ Roald would say – or, ‘You’ll have some trouble with this.’ Quentin would make lots of rough drawings to take along to Gipsy House, where he would show them to Roald and see what he thought. Roald Dahl liked his books to be packed with illustrations – Quentin ended up drawing twice as many pictures for The BFG as he had originally been asked for.

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Quentin Blake was born on 16 December 1932. His first drawing was published when he was sixteen, and he has written and illustrated many of his own books, as well as Roald Dahl’s. Besides being an illustrator he taught for over twenty years at the Royal College of Art – he is a real professor!