Shirley Hughes

• Name — Shirley Hughes • Honorific Suffix — CBE • Birth Name — Winifred Shirley Hughes • Born — 16 July 1927 • Birthplace — West Kirby, England • Died — 25 February 2022 • Place of death — Kensington, London, England • Occupation — Illustrator, writer • Period — 1960–2022 • Genre — Children's literature, picture books • Notable Works — * Dogger • Ella's Big Chance • Awards — Kate Greenaway Medal • Children — 3

Hughes was born in West Kirby, then in the county of Cheshire (now in Merseyside), on 16 July 1927. The daughter of Thomas James Hughes, owner of the Liverpool-based store chain T. J. Hughes and his wife Kathleen (née Dowling), she grew up in West Kirby on the Wirral. She recalled being inspired from childhood by artists like Arthur Rackham and W. Heath Robinson, and later by the cinema and the Walker Art Gallery. Particular favourites of hers were Edward Ardizzone, and EH Shepard who illustrated Wind in the Willows and Winnie-the-Pooh. She enjoyed frequent visits to the theatre with her mother, which gave her a love for observing people and a desire to create. She was educated at West Kirby Grammar School, but Hughes said she was not a particularly good student academically, and when she was 17, she left school to study drawing and costume design at the Liverpool School of Art. In Liverpool she found that societal pressure was put on her to find a husband and then not achieve much with her life. She longed to escape from these claustrophobic expectations, so moved to Oxford in order to attend the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art.

After art school she moved to Notting Hill, London. In 1952, she married John Sebastian Papendiek Vulliamy, an architect and etcher, of the Vulliamy family. They had three children together: the journalist Ed Vulliamy, the geneticist Tom Vulliamy, and Clara Vulliamy, who is also a children's book illustrator.

In Oxford, Hughes was encouraged to work in the picture book format and make lithographic illustrations. However, after graduating she attempted to pursue her ambitions of becoming a theatre designer, and took a job at the Birmingham Rep Theatre. She quickly decided that the "enclosed hothouse" of the theatre world wasn't for her, so followed her former tutor's advice and started working as an illustrator. She began by illustrating the books of other authors, including My Naughty Little Sister by Dorothy Edwards and The Bell Family by Noel Streatfeild. The first published book she both wrote and illustrated was Lucy & Tom's Day, which was made into a series of stories. She went on to write over fifty more stories, including Dogger (1977), the Alfie series (1977), featuring a young boy named Alfie and sometimes his sister Annie-Rose, and the Olly and Me series (1993). The Walker Art Gallery in her hometown of Liverpool hosted an exhibition of her work in 2003, which then moved to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. Her most famous book, Dogger, is about a toy dog who is lost by a small boy, but is then reunited with his owner after being found in a jumble sale. This book was inspired by her son, Ed, who lost his favourite teddy in Holland Park. A real Dogger also existed, and was on display along with the rest of her work at her exhibition in London and Oxford. Hughes illustrated 200 children's books throughout her career, which sold more than 10 million copies. In WorldCat participating libraries, eight of her ten most widely held works were Alfie books (1981 to 2002). The others were Dogger (rank second) and Out and About (1988). Hughes wrote her first novel in 2015, a young-adult book titled Hero on a Bicycle. She was 84 years of age when she wrote this. Hughes died from bronchopneumonia at her home in Kensington, London, on 25 February 2022, aged 94. She was paid tribute to by the UK's largest children's reading charity, the BookTrust, who said they were "devastated" by her death and that her "incredible stories and illustrations, from Dogger to Alfie and Lucy and Tom, have touched so many generations and are still so loved. Thank you, Shirley.” Michael Morpurgo, author of War Horse, praised her, noting that she "began the reading lives of so many millions."

• Moving Molly • Bathwater's Hot • Noisy • When We Went to the Park • All Shapes and Sizes • Colours • Two Shoes, New Shoes • The Snow Lady. • Out and About • Dogger • Lucy and Tom's Christmas • Lucy and Tom at the Seaside • Tales of Trotter Street • Hero on a Bicycle • The Christmas Eve Ghost • The Lion and the Unicorn • Helpers • Angel Mae • Dogger's Christmas • Jonadab and Rita

• Alfie Gets in First • Alfie Gives a Hand • Alfie Wins a Prize • Alfie's Feet • Alfie's Weather • An Evening at Alfie's • The Big Alfie and Annie Rose Story Book • Rhymes for Annie Rose