Chris Riddell, Children's Laureate: 'Everybody can draw - just do it! - Telegraph

Riddell, who is 53, has illustrated more than 150 books since his career began in the Eighties. He has won two Kate Greenaway medals for illustrating the words of others - for Pirate Diary by Richard Platt (2002) and Martin Jenkins's rendition of Gulliver (2004) - and he won the Costa Children's Book Award for his own Goth Girl, in which his delight in puns, gothic sensibility and relish for literary allusion reached a peak. His celebrated collaborations include three books with Neil Gaiman (The Graveyard Book and Fortunately the Milk were both best-sellers) and a fantasy pastiche series with Paul Stewart. He took the dismal text of Russell Brand's retelling of the Pied Piper of Hamelin and made it spectacular. A Great Big Cuddle: Poems for the Very Young, chosen by fellow Laureate Michael Rosen, is out in September.

Once a week, Riddell lampoons fat cats and political leaders with decorative opulence in The Literary Review and The Observer. "The Observer was the paper my father read," he says, before explaining that his entry into the field of political cartoons came from The Economist, though to this day he doesn't know why. "I like to think the editor was reading my picturebooks to his children - The Trouble With Elephants was about that time - and he thought my way with large animals made me just the person to comment on the European Union." Riddell says he is "a man of firm opinions", but does not want to politicise the Laureateship. "I'm there to advocate writers and illustrators and the children's books industry."