Meet the author

Anthony Browne.

Writer & illustrator · United Kingdom · b. 1946

Anthony Browne: former Children's Laureate and Hans Christian Andersen Award winner whose surreal, meticulously painted picture books are a fixture of the primary-school bookshelf.

Anthony Browne (born 1946) is one of Britain's most celebrated picture-book makers, a writer and illustrator whose surreal, meticulously painted worlds have shaped children's publishing for over four decades. He was UK Children's Laureate from 2009 to 2011, won two Kate Greenaway Medals, and in 2000 became the first British illustrator to receive the Hans Christian Andersen Award, the highest international honour in the field. Across more than fifty books, including Gorilla, Willy the Wimp, Voices in the Park and Into the Forest, he layers ordinary family life with dreamlike detail and hidden references that reward close looking. His work sits on primary-school bookshelves and curriculum lists across the country, quietly exploring fear, family and belonging with unmatched visual intelligence.