A life drawing

The book begins with a small girl in West Kirby who is obsessed with comics: "The Daily Sketch", "The Daily Express" and "The Mirror" - each of these newspapers helped to shape Shirley Hughes' career.

Her story takes us from this gentle start, through World War II, and to a career which began with Art School in a blitzed Liverpool, led to Oxford and then to London.

Shirley reflects on art and describes her own creative process as "the nearest thing I know to flying into the sun".

The book is illustrated with sketches from her Italian sketchbooks, doodles from boring meetings, roughs from her picture books and perfectly executed paintings done just for the fun of it.