I don't think about 'age groups.'

I didn't read children's books when I was a child. The only books in our house were ration books.

Before I could walk, my world was a world of legs - soldiers' legs, sailors' legs, bus drivers' legs and, worst of all, little old ladies' legs. Growing up in the shop was fantastic - American GIs, Poles, Czechs, Australians, troops from all over the world came to our shop for cigarettes and cups of tea and inspired my desire to travel the world.

I never read any fairy tales or classics until I was an adult; all we ever had was comics... No television, either. If we wanted entertainment, we hung around the fish shop.

In big battle scenes, like 'King Arthur', you see the knights in all their fine armour, but they're not in the thick of it: follow the perspective, and you'll find some poor little sod, who didn't want to be there, anyway, with his head split.

Drawing teaches you to look at things properly and to understand form and structure.

Drawing was the only thing I was any good at in school, but I never dreamt I would, or even could, spend my life doing it.

The seed of an idea laying dormant in an old sketchbook is fed the missing ingredient from a new experience. Trying to share some of these experiences, some of the wonders, is one of the reasons why I do books.

Things have to be believable, not in a literal, photographic sense, but in an emotional sense - capturing the essence of the situation.

I've done a bit of teaching, but I gave it up - I felt uneasy teaching illustration to people who hadn't yet learned to draw.