A bit of gossip for you...

As well as beginning my new book, Katie's Christmas, I have gone back to being a student. At my age!!! And I'm loving it. I've enrolled on a course in set design for performance at Central St. Martin's School of Art, near Kings Cross, and the timing is perfect for my various theatrical excursions this year.

Noye's Fludde - the opera by Benjamin Britten - has a cast of 200, including , of course, assorted animals to go into the ark two by two. But I'm beginning with the opera buffa characters - the GOSSIPS, saucy women who distract Mrs Noye from joining the ark as the storm approaches.

These are not yet true costume designs. I am just trying to find the gestures and attitudes of these bawdy wenches. I imagine them in medieval garb, as befits a miracle play, and indeed Tewkesbury Abbey, where the opera will be staged this July. This is how I like to approach a project like this - and it's similar to how I would approach characters in a book - imagining their motivation, their body language, their expression. Because this will give me the costumes and so the characterisation.

I'm having a lot of fun with these ladies, who I imagine as blowsy, voluptuous, vulgar... and just a little bit wicked; they do drown in the flood, after all!

Britten 100: Plans for Young Persons...

One of Britten's most enduring pieces is The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra, founded on a theme by Henry Purcell, and originally written as a broadcast educational work, with narration. Nowadays it's most often performed without narration. If words are used it is rarely the original dry-as-a-bone text.

As part of my Guest Directorship of the Cheltenham Music Festival this year, I've been invited to rethink the Young Person's Guide for a concert with Chetham's Symphony Orchestra, who will be coming from the celebrated Chetham's Music School in Manchester.

As with my other family concerts, this will be illustrated in some way... I'm still developing a script that will fit the rapid twists and turns of this dazzlingly inventive music, and still give me time to draw or paint!


Meanwhile, a poster, with parts for colouring in, is being produced to advertise all the family events in Cheltenham this summer: Noye's Fludde, Stravinsky's piano version of his Firebird (with a wonderful young Russian pianist called Nikolai Ponomarev), and other treats too. Here are a couple of suggestions for the poster. I'm waiting to hear what the team in Cheltenham think!

Carry on Carnival... of the animals.

I have almost reached the end of this project for Naxos records - which is an App based on Saint-Saen's Carnival of the Animals.

Talk about a learning curve! But I guess it's all good knowledge to have. The 15 screens for this App are all made up of many small individual pieces, assembled on screen so they can be recomposed for different screen sizes, and also so some elements can be animated.Much of the art has been created in sketchbooks, just playing around creating simple shapes in inks.




The images are adjusted and recoloured as necessary in photoshop... all very different for me. The important thing has been to create images that will still be recognisable to a 3 year old even on an iphone!


It will (I hope) be a lovely way of presenting this children's favourite to a new and young audience. It has also encouraged me to work in new and unexpected ways...

Here's some more work in progress. I'm not sure when it will be "published" but I will,  of course, keep you posted!

Britten 100: A curious inevitability...

This year is the 100th anniversary of the birth of the English composer Benjamin Britten. He was born in Lowestoft, where much of my own family hail from. Both my grandparents knew him when young; they told many anecdotes about him - which I'll write about in a future Britten 100 post. I myself grew up at Blundeston, a tiny village 3 or 4 miles inland from Lowestoft.

My high school was the Benjamin Britten High School - a brand new school, and I  was part of the founding year. It was not a music college, as the name might suggest, but just a normal 1970s comprehensive in a town suffering very high unemployment as it's principle industries, fishing and shipbuilding, evaporated.

The emblem at the school entrance always caught my eye - a dove flying over water. I guessed it was Noah's Ark. But why?

It was many years later when I first heard of Benjamin Britten's Noye's Fludde. The emblem was a direct reference to his wonderful children's opera!

And now I find myself working on creating designs for a production of this very work, and that 70s dove flies about in my thoughts.

 I could never have guessed I'd be working on several Britten related projects one day. But it does indeed feel inevitable - a circle of experience coming to completion.

Strictly Bubble & Squeak!

The lights dim... the curtains part... and a new book is revealed! Forget Strictly Come Dancing... this year, for theatrical magic and a sprinkling of stardust, look no further than Bubble & Squeak!



Poor little Squeak... a mouse with no friends, forlorn and unloved, but with a fondness for cheese and Strawberry Bon Bons...

But just because you are small, doesn't mean you can't have big dreams. And that's something I know a LOT about. I was, after all, the smallest boy in school. I know that feeling... I WAS Squeak!

I must admit I felt very Squeak-like when I first met the Glamorous Clara Vulliamy. And then when she asked me to write her a story, I hid my face in my paws for fear of failure. But Clara is a marvel, and she encouraged me again and again.

And somehow, over the course of much cake-eating with Clara, out came this story of a very small mouse and a rather gorgeous elephant.

Of course Clara and I became the best of friends. But could a mouse and an elephant ever really be friends as well?

That's something you'll have to wait to find out, when the book is published in May. But for now... here's the front cover, gleaming with Clara's glorious pictures. Doesn't it look lovely?

Find out more at Clara's blog: http://claras.me/

Yes... this year, everything will be strictly Bubble & Squeak!

2013 - raise a glass of Bubbly (and Squeak)

An exciting year stretches a head full of challenges and daring tight-rope walks. New things, wonderful things, and a year in which I'll be facing a few dreams and trying to make them come true. More on those events anon. But what better way of illustrating the metaphor than with news of a new book for 2013.

A tight-rope walk. A dream come true, and definitely something to toast with a glass of Bubbly: Please let me introduce you to Bubble & Squeak!

I'm responsible for the words, and together with that wonderful illustrator Clara Vulliamy, a feast of friendship and frolics has been fashioned, due to be served in May! There will be a whiff of grease-paint. There will be names in lights and bouquets. There will be danger and daring and dancing girls. I won't tell you more yet... but I'm very excited and I hope you'll love it as much as I do!