Talk - John Vernon Lord

The Ditchling-based illustrator John Vernon Lord will be giving a talk on his long and varied career for the Lewes Monday Literature Club tonight, which will be followed by the organisation’s annual Christmas party. You may remember his marvellous book The Giant Jam Sandwich, a children’s story in which a village community threatened by an enormous plague of wasps gets together to save the day. You might remember his version of Aesop’s Fables, which he set entirely in Ditchling. Or you might remember his version of Edward Lear’s Nonsense verses in which, he tells me, ‘he dared to trample on Lear’s own drawings’ to some effect.

Lord no longer illustrates childrens’ books. He lectured on the subject for some time, ‘which sublimated the need to do it myself. I got it out of my system’. He also feels that there is a certain tweeness about current-day children’s illustrations. “People are hampered by political correctness, by the need to be multiculturalist. I applaud this, but feel that it is constraining,” he says. “Also there’s so much of it about. Children’s books are breeding like rabbits.” Lord has more recently turned to illustrating large books about British and Icelandic folklore, ‘real old texts of yore’, and a version of the fantastic Lewis Carroll poem, the Hunting of the Snark. “My work has changed over the years,” he says. “It’s got tighter as I’ve got older.” His talk, of course, will be lavishly illustrated by examples of his artwork. We hope to see a Bandersnatch. AG