Sarah Garland
Sarah Garland is a much-loved British author/illustrator who has published more than 40 books. She lives in Chedworth, Gloucestershire. Her books published by Frances Lincoln include Eddie's Garden and Eddie's Kitchen; Going to Playschool, Doing the Garden, Going Swimming, Coming to Tea, Doing the Shopping, Doing Christmas, Having a Picnic and Doing the Washing; Billy and Belle; Dashing Dog; Splash and Zoom.
Mother superior
From The Observer
As her best loved books are republished, children's writer and illustrator Sarah Garland talks to Kate Kellaway about the joy of drawing messy families
Sarah Garland's books could not find a French publisher because her mothers were judged insufficiently chic. What French madame would be seen in a shapeless green duffel coat, pushing a buggy uphill, with the baby's bottle (lid off) peeping out of her pocket? Garland is one of the best and most sympathetic chroniclers of English family life precisely because her pencil doesn't lie about the slog of bringing up children. She has a loving, unsentimental eye. She can be festive but is never false. I have always been profoundly grateful to her for drawing a mother I can relate to - as have millions of others who adore her work.
She has written 40 books during her career but it is a particular cause for celebration that her irresistible series of seven - what she thinks of as her 'Coming and Going' books (Coming to Tea, Doing Christmas, Going Swimming...) - are all to be republished along with two delightful newcomers: Eddie's Garden and How to Make Things Grow and Eddie's Kitchen and How to Make Good Things to Eat. This Garland renaissance offered me the excuse I need to meet her - something I have always wanted to do.
She lives in Chedworth, Gloucestershire. I half expected to find her in chaos, as if the tangle of toddlers that she has always drawn so well were a permanent condition. But her four children are grown up now, and two of her three grandchildren are at a tidy distance in New Zealand. She lives in a tranquil grey stone house with bright blue lobelias spilling out of pots outside her door, white painted wooden floors, a trusty Aga, and her husband, David Garland, a ceramicist whose plates and pots boldly make their presences felt. David is the model for the grandfather in her newest books. But Sarah does not look like anyone's granny. It is far easier, as she sits with her legs tucked under her in an armchair, to picture her as a schoolgirl - sparky, lanky, with boyish hair. She wears black-and-white-striped tights and shocking pink socks.
She has always loved drawing people, she says, appreciating 'shapes of bodies.' But as a child she flirted with 'becoming an animal psychologist.' There is a lanky dog in the 'Coming and Going' books (the Society for Retired Greyhounds wrote to salute her for including him). She modestly quotes a Thomas Hardy line to describe her work as 'humbly recording unadjusted impressions.' I'd say she is more interpreter than recorder. And, besides, some pleasurable adjusting of impressions has been going on. In the newly republished series, she has changed parts of illustrations that have 'bothered me over the years.' An Asian mother has had a furtive makeover, 'sticking a sweet new head on her throughout Going to Playschool.' Less satisfactory in my view - though Garland doesn't grumble - is the publisher's intervention to Doing Christmas. In the first draft, the mother at the end of the day was slumped in an armchair, sipping wine. Now, thanks to over-abstemious editorial intervention, she clutches a cup of tea.
Garland grew up in a 'very small and ancient, terraced cottage' at the foot of Clay Hill in Bushey, Hertfordshire. 'It was quite bohemian - packed with paintings, books, a piano and peculiar furniture made of thin bits of wood by my very unhandy Dad. The lav was part of a coal hole and the bath was in the kitchen.' She was brought up by her grandmother because her mother, who was an illustrator, was 'troubled, not a bringing-up type.' Her father was a writer of strip cartoons, children's books and a naval historian. One of her sisters is the novelist Deborah Moggach. She loved her childhood until, at 11, she was sent to boarding school. She felt 'cast into outer darkness'. She ran away but was returned to school immediately. At 16, she successfully 'fabricated a nervous breakdown' and left. She contentedly completed a secretarial course, then trained as a typographer at the London College of Printing. The two lasting results of that time are that she 'sets shopping lists to the left' and that she met her husband. She married, like her mother before her, at 19. She was 21 when she became pregnant with her first child, after David was hurt in a car crash. 'I got pregnant in case he was going to die. I was very happy to make my own family,' she says. 'In my life my most intense experiences have been about family.'
Bringing up children and working as a writer meant that 'we lived in a shameful mess.' But she has always loved drawing the mess. Today her house is too neat to be a model. And the model for the mother in Eddie's Kitchen is no longer herself - it is one of her daughters. But this delectable book with robust recipes - including crusty white bread and orange drizzle cake - is a perfect antidote to the excesses of Christmas.
This year, on Christmas Day, she will be flying to New Zealand, returning in the new year. What are the advantages to home life once the children have gone? 'Calmness. Being able to listen to music. Being able to cut all your toenails at once. Not being interrupted.'
She has written 40 books during her career but it is a particular cause for celebration that her irresistible series of seven - what she thinks of as her 'Coming and Going' books (Coming to Tea, Doing Christmas, Going Swimming...) - are all to be republished along with two delightful newcomers: Eddie's Garden and How to Make Things Grow and Eddie's Kitchen and How to Make Good Things to Eat. This Garland renaissance offered me the excuse I need to meet her - something I have always wanted to do.
She lives in Chedworth, Gloucestershire. I half expected to find her in chaos, as if the tangle of toddlers that she has always drawn so well were a permanent condition. But her four children are grown up now, and two of her three grandchildren are at a tidy distance in New Zealand. She lives in a tranquil grey stone house with bright blue lobelias spilling out of pots outside her door, white painted wooden floors, a trusty Aga, and her husband, David Garland, a ceramicist whose plates and pots boldly make their presences felt. David is the model for the grandfather in her newest books. But Sarah does not look like anyone's granny. It is far easier, as she sits with her legs tucked under her in an armchair, to picture her as a schoolgirl - sparky, lanky, with boyish hair. She wears black-and-white-striped tights and shocking pink socks.
She has always loved drawing people, she says, appreciating 'shapes of bodies.' But as a child she flirted with 'becoming an animal psychologist.' There is a lanky dog in the 'Coming and Going' books (the Society for Retired Greyhounds wrote to salute her for including him). She modestly quotes a Thomas Hardy line to describe her work as 'humbly recording unadjusted impressions.' I'd say she is more interpreter than recorder. And, besides, some pleasurable adjusting of impressions has been going on. In the newly republished series, she has changed parts of illustrations that have 'bothered me over the years.' An Asian mother has had a furtive makeover, 'sticking a sweet new head on her throughout Going to Playschool.' Less satisfactory in my view - though Garland doesn't grumble - is the publisher's intervention to Doing Christmas. In the first draft, the mother at the end of the day was slumped in an armchair, sipping wine. Now, thanks to over-abstemious editorial intervention, she clutches a cup of tea.
Garland grew up in a 'very small and ancient, terraced cottage' at the foot of Clay Hill in Bushey, Hertfordshire. 'It was quite bohemian - packed with paintings, books, a piano and peculiar furniture made of thin bits of wood by my very unhandy Dad. The lav was part of a coal hole and the bath was in the kitchen.' She was brought up by her grandmother because her mother, who was an illustrator, was 'troubled, not a bringing-up type.' Her father was a writer of strip cartoons, children's books and a naval historian. One of her sisters is the novelist Deborah Moggach. She loved her childhood until, at 11, she was sent to boarding school. She felt 'cast into outer darkness'. She ran away but was returned to school immediately. At 16, she successfully 'fabricated a nervous breakdown' and left. She contentedly completed a secretarial course, then trained as a typographer at the London College of Printing. The two lasting results of that time are that she 'sets shopping lists to the left' and that she met her husband. She married, like her mother before her, at 19. She was 21 when she became pregnant with her first child, after David was hurt in a car crash. 'I got pregnant in case he was going to die. I was very happy to make my own family,' she says. 'In my life my most intense experiences have been about family.'
Bringing up children and working as a writer meant that 'we lived in a shameful mess.' But she has always loved drawing the mess. Today her house is too neat to be a model. And the model for the mother in Eddie's Kitchen is no longer herself - it is one of her daughters. But this delectable book with robust recipes - including crusty white bread and orange drizzle cake - is a perfect antidote to the excesses of Christmas.
This year, on Christmas Day, she will be flying to New Zealand, returning in the new year. What are the advantages to home life once the children have gone? 'Calmness. Being able to listen to music. Being able to cut all your toenails at once. Not being interrupted.'
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