The Scottish artist John Johnstone generously agreed to illustrate two of my early children’s books - The Boat in the Bay and The Broken Bell. I say “illustrate,” but his striking pen-and-ink drawings, in fact, were images of characters disconcertingly different from my own imaginings and I found myself facing a dilemma that confronted Arthur Ransome. His publishers, not unreasonably, had commissioned Clifford Webb to illustrate Swallows and Amazons, but Ransome was so wedded to his own view of the characters (Titty Walker, in particular) that he simply could not bear to see them illustrated on the page. He decided to do the illustrations himself - even then denying the reader direct sight of anyone’s face.
In the course of discussions about The Broken Bell, John Johnstone sent me the image of the unfinished oil painting you can see above. It is a wonderfully evocative account of Ian’s interaction with the mysterious praying mantis at the railway station, much in the style of Stanley Spencer. It was certainly not Uncle Albert as I had imagined him, but such is the mysterious power of art that it was this image that lived with me as I worked on The Pink House (and followed Ransome’s lead by denying the reader any illustrations at all!).
But the seed had been planted and it seemed inevitable all these years later that I would look to Stanley Spencer to illustrate the cover of The War and Alex Vere. As a young lecturer in Dundee many years ago I played chess with a rather forbidding senior colleague in his upstairs drawing room overlooking Magdalen Green. Above the fireplace hung a Spencer painting, one of a series concerned with love letters. It too was an image that lived with me for more years than I can tell.
As for the part played by love letters in the story of Alex and Justine ... well, you'll just have to read the book.