Doing It By The Book

Sir Quentin Blake reveals the inspiration behind his new exhibition, ‘Anthology of Readers’, in which he affectionately caricatures the bookish among us

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THE invitation to make drawings of readers has, for me, several interests. One is that reading happens to be the only discipline in which I have a proper qualification: more than half a century ago, I had the privilege of reading English at Downing College Cambridge at the feet of F. R. Leavis, the most remarkable literary critic of the time. Leavis was dogmatic, but, taken properly, could really help you to read both perceptively and as a whole person. I have always valued the time spent with the Metaphysicals: Pope, Hopkins and —inevitably with Leavis—D. H. Lawrence. At that time, Leavis hadn’t really discovered the genius of Dickens; Hard Times was singled out as the work of merit and it was only later that he opened up to the extraordinary richness of Great Expectations, Bleak House and Little Dorrit.