Hey! Get Off Our Train

Portrait

John Burningham works 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 is littered with pens, pencils, paints, papers and rough drawings. When he's not working on a book, he loves collecting -- furniture, statues, staircases, and old curtains. He travels around England and France looking for unusual things to put in his house or to sell to someone else. John marks 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 can discuss their work or just have a general chat; and at around six o'clock, a drink of delicious red wine, preferably French (wine is another one of his interests). He has always been interested in the third dimension, and many of his books have to be constructed layer by layer because he enjoys painting on different materials -- paper, cardboard, wood -- so that a variety of textures comes through on the printed page.