With a seventy-year career as an illustrator, Quentin Blake’s status as a national treasure was confirmed with the Christmas-Day screening of The Drawing of My Life on BBC2. The biographical film followed the 89-year-old, who resembles one of his own illustrations, describes his style as ‘deceptively slapdash’, and likes drawing in bed, as he filled a thirty-foot canvas with a depiction of his life story. Blake, who is most famous as the beloved illustrator of children’s books including those by Roald Dahl, was asked by The Guardian’s Fiona Sturges in 2020 if he ever canvasses children to see what they like, and don’t like. ‘Good God no,’ said the illustrator, who doesn’t have children or grandchildren of his own. ‘Oh no. I get on with them perfectly well but spend time with them? No, no, no. There’s no need, you see. I just make it all up.’