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Ladybird book King John and the Magna Carta
King John was a ‘a treacherous, boastful coward’, according to the Ladybird book King John and the Magna Carta, whose artwork forms part of the Reading University collection. Photograph: © Ladybird Books Ltd
King John was a ‘a treacherous, boastful coward’, according to the Ladybird book King John and the Magna Carta, whose artwork forms part of the Reading University collection. Photograph: © Ladybird Books Ltd

Entire art gallery of Ladybird book covers is world first

This article is more than 7 years old

Archive of artworks from a century of the imprint’s simple, wholesome worldview go on display at Museum of English Rural Life

If all you knew of the world came from a Ladybird book, you would be forgiven for believing factories are always shining temples of industry and optimism rather than zero-hours sweatshops, policemen are invariably handsome and friendly, and mothers wear white gloves to take their impeccably dressed children shopping.

The world’s first permanent gallery devoted to this wholesome, primary-coloured universe has opened at the Museum of English Rural Life in Reading.

Archivist Guy Baxter said the archive of more than 20,000 images had been preserved by Reading University since Penguin took over from the original publishers.

“There are many legends about this collection: it is certainly true that one police force bought many copies of Motor Mechanics, but the jury is still out on whether scores of copies of How to Read Maps were really bought by the Ministry of Defence for the Falklands war,” Baxter said.

The displays include original artwork by some of Ladybird’s best illustrators, including Charles Tunnicliffe who was, Baxter says, hopeless with human figures but a genius with nature; his enchanting view of a hare leaping from a newly ploughed furrow is among the pieces on display.

Ladybird books invariably portrayed happy, smiling, perfectly turned-out children, without a hoodie in sight. Photograph: © Ladybird Books Ltd

Another of the early artists was Reading’s own Allen W Seaby, a painter and amateur ornithologist who became the first head of the university’s fine art department.

A proof sheet shows how little the books, first issued in 1915 by the Loughborough publishers Wills and Hepworth, changed once they settled on a standard format to cope with wartime paper shortages: a single large sheet of paper printed on both sides gave 56 pages of text and illustrations, and a cover. The books were priced for almost 30 years at half a crown.

Within the cramped format authors tackled subjects as complex and varied as prehistoric Britain, nuclear power, practical woodwork, Arthurian legend, and Pope John Paul II. From 1964, the insufferably well behaved Peter and Jane were introduced in the How to Read series. Recently, the parodic Ladybird titles for grown-ups have proved runaway bestsellers, earning an estimated £30m for Penguin.

The Reading gallery has scores of titles shelved chronologically from 1961’s Learning to Read Numbers, to current titles such as Climate Change by HRH The Prince of Wales, whose 50 pages are credited with two more co-authors and eight peer reviewers.

Prince Charles’s book is one of three new “expert” titles, for which the first new artwork in 40 years was commissioned. Before that illustrations were endlessly recycled and updated where necessary: an early space exploration image was overpainted to show that the Eagle had landed in 1969, and the curators found a new head had been glued on top of one image of Jane.

Baxter wonders if modern viewers will be charmed or chagrined by the Ladybird worldview. “Will they just feel nostalgia,” he said, “or perhaps worry about this very simplistic, sanitised view of the world we were presented with, and passed on to our own children?”

Baxter’s own favourite is King John and Magna Carta, which was first published in 1969 and – in common with hundreds of other Ladybird titles – has never been out of print since. He has insisted it be stocked in the museum shop, and can quote from memory its magnificent take-no-prisoners introduction: “King John was probably the worst king ever to mount the English throne. He was cruel and treacherous, a boastful coward; mean and deceitful as a man, utterly untrustworthy as a king. He died loathed by everyone who knew him, regretted by none.”

“Loathed by everyone, regretted by none,” Baxter says, with relish. “That’s the way to do it.”

The gallery will be officially launched in March, with a display of the artwork for Climate Change, but is already open, free of charge, every day except Mondays.

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