23 Facts About Shirley Hughes

Shirley Hughes wrote more than fifty books, which have sold more than 11.5 million copies, and illustrated more than two hundred.

Shirley Hughes won the inaugural BookTrust lifetime achievement award in 2015.

Shirley Hughes was a recipient of the Eleanor Farjeon Award.

Shirley Hughes was a patron of the Association of Illustrators.

Shirley Hughes was born in West Kirby, then in the county of Cheshire, on 16 July 1927.

Shirley Hughes recalled being inspired from childhood by artists like Arthur Rackham and W Heath Robinson, and later by the cinema and the Walker Art Gallery.

Shirley Hughes enjoyed frequent visits to the theatre with her mother, which gave her a love for observing people and a desire to create.

Shirley Hughes longed to escape from these claustrophobic expectations, so moved to Oxford in order to attend the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art.

In Oxford, Shirley Hughes was encouraged to work in the picture book format and make lithographic illustrations.

Shirley Hughes quickly decided that the "enclosed hothouse" of the theatre world wasn't for her, so followed her former tutor's advice and started working as an illustrator.

Shirley Hughes began by illustrating the books of other authors, including My Naughty Little Sister by Dorothy Edwards and The Bell Family by Noel Streatfeild.

Shirley Hughes went on to write over fifty more stories, including Dogger, the Alfie series, featuring a young boy named Alfie and sometimes his sister Annie-Rose, and the Olly and Me series.

Shirley Hughes illustrated 200 children's books throughout her career, which sold more than 10 million copies.

Shirley Hughes wrote her first novel in 2015, a young-adult book titled Hero on a Bicycle.

Shirley Hughes was 84 years of age when she wrote this.

Shirley Hughes died on 25 February 2022 at her home in London.

Shirley Hughes was 94, and suffered from a brief illness prior to her death.

Dogger, which she wrote and illustrated, was the first story by Shirley Hughes to be widely published abroad and it was recognised by the Library Association's Kate Greenaway Medal as the year's best children's book illustration by a British subject.

Shirley Hughes won a second Greenaway for Ella's Big Chance, her own adaptation of Cinderella, set in the 1920s.

Shirley Hughes was a three-time Greenaway commended runner up: for Flutes and Cymbals: Poetry for the Young, a collection compiled by Leonard Clark; for Helpers, which she wrote and illustrated; and for The Lion and the Unicorn, which she wrote and illustrated.

In 1984, Shirley Hughes won the Eleanor Farjeon Award for distinguished service to children's literature, in 1999 she was awarded an OBE, and in 2000 she was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Shirley Hughes was granted an Honorary Fellowship by Liverpool John Moores University and Honorary Degrees by the University of Liverpool in 2004 and the University of Chester in 2012.

Already Officer of the Order of the British Empire, Shirley Hughes was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2017 New Year Honours for services to literature.