The Life of Birds

by Quentin Blake

• Doubleday
• 60 pp
• 2005

From the publisher: “The pictures in The Life of Birds are bigger, broader and more sombre, but no less lively then his much loved and hugely admired children’s book illustrations. Here Quentin Blake follows in the path of the great illustrators such as Daumier and Lear, and of fabulists like Aesop and La Fontaine. Wonderfully acute observations of how birds behave become a commentary – kindly, but penetrating – on human nature.”

Peter Campbell worked with Quentin Blake often. For The Life of Birds he both designed the book and wrote the introduction. Royalties from the book went towards the foundation of the House of Illustration which opened in Kings Cross in 2014.