Hey! Get Off Our Train

JOHN BURNINGHAM worked in the basement of his house in London on an old boardroom table, which came from The Monkey Club, a school for debutantes in Kensington, and was littered with pens, pencils, paints, papers, and rough drawings. When he wasn’t working on a book, he loved collecting—furniture, statues, staircases, and old curtains. He traveled around England and France looking for unusual things to put in his house or to sell to someone else. John marked the day with things to look forward to—a large mug of good strong coffee to start the day; lunch, when his wife, children’s book writer and illustrator Helen Oxenbury and John could discuss their work or just have a general chat; and at around six o’clock, a drink of delicious red wine, preferably French (wine was another one of his interests). He was always interested in the third dimension, and many of his books had to be constructed layer by layer because he enjoyed painting on different materials—paper, cardboard, wood—so that a variety of textures came through on the printed page. John Burningham died on January 4, 2019 at the age of 82.