‘I would find myself forging my own work’: Quentin Blake on how he came to found the House of Illustration

The illustrator Quentin Blake is uncannily like one of his own creations: tousled, bright-eyed, quizzical, and apologetic about his summer cold. He greeted me warmly and conducted me down a dimly lit hallway into his lair, a studio giving on to a leafy London square, piled high with the tools of his trade: papers teetering on plan chests, jars of brushes, palettes of paints, toppling books — all the shambolic clutter of a busy artist’s life and work.

I was there to find out about the eagerly anticipated House of Illustration, which opened this week in the old railwaymen’s house on Granary Square, that ineffably cool destination north of King’s Cross, home to Central St Martins College of Art and just over Regent’s Canal from Kings Place. Quentin Blake is both presiding genius and originator, and the opening exhibition, Inside Stories, will be devoted to his work, exploring in graphic detail how he constructs his narratives and characters. Blake, the Pied Piper of British illustrators, was appointed the first Children’s Laureate in 1999, awarded the CBE in 2005 and given a knighthood last year for services to children’s literature. But this humorous and unassuming man does so much more than produce quirky and enchanting books irresistible to children (and their parents), and this latest venture, the fruition of 12 years’ plotting and planning, fulfils a long-held dream to bring illustration out of the shadows on to centre stage.

It all started a long time ago. ‘I knew I wanted to be an artist when I was at school but the received wisdom was that you could never make a living …I always drew, though, and when a teacher whose husband, Alfred Jackson, was a cartoonist in Punch spotted the caricatures I’d drawn of her in the margins of my exercise book she said I’d better meet him.