Revisiting The Jolly Postman, a beloved childhood classic

There are children's books.

- Jessie Thompson, The Independent

And then there's The Jolly Postman. Janet and Allan Ahlberg's enchanting Eighties tale of a postman cheerily delivering letters to a village of fairytale characters — tiny letters that you, the reader, can pull from envelopes and actually read — is the Rolls-Royce of children's books.They don't make them like that any more. (Postmen don't tend to pop in for a cuppa any more, either.)

“Once upon a bicycle, so they say, a Jolly Postman came one day.” So begins this children's classic, and so begins our hero's morning round, which sees him drinking industrially British quantities of tea, fixing a flat tyre on his bike, and then trying to ride it successfully after drinking with some royals presumably quite early in the morning. And now, a new exhibition at the Postal Museum in London is marking 40 years of the best book of your childhood.

Running until early next year, it offers treats for little visitors and nostalgic adults alike: the Ahlbergs' illustrations and notebooks are on display, many being shown for the first time, while the postman's journey is brought to life with interactive exhibits. Everyone's here: the black cat doing the witch's washing up while she decides what to order from Hobgoblin Supplies Ltd; a repentant Goldilocks who feels bad about eating all the “porij”; the big bad wolf, grumpily reading a solicitor’s letter telling him to vacate the house of Miss Riding-Hood’s grandma.