The illustrated Hospital by Quentin Blake:Compiled by Liz Williams

Quentin Blake’s large and relatively unknown body of work for hospitals and healthcare settings has never before been collected together in one place. The Illustrated Hospital is a beautifully-crafted catalogue of all the drawings he designed for these specialised spaces and the patients, staff and visitors who use them. Nearly 20 years in the making, this book allows everyone to enjoy Blake’s wonderful, varied visions originally installed in clinics across the UK and in France.<br/><br/>'Since 2005, Quentin Blake’s drawings for hospitals and healthcare settings have become a significant part of his work. Because of their clinical function, many of the spaces are not easily accessible to visitors, so relatively few people – only patients and hospital staff – may get the chance to see these artworks. This is the first time that the attempt has been made to collect all of Quentin’s work for hospitals together to form a detailed catalogue.<br/><br/>There are so many drawings, for such a variety of settings, that it’s been a real challenge to try and make this collection as complete as possible. I hope we’ve succeeded. For reasons of space – not to mention the impossibility of pinning down a situation which is constantly changing – I’ve only included works which Quentin has produced specifically for hospitals. Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge, for example, has a copy of the large mural featuring some of the University’s most famous alumni, which Quentin created for the University’s 800th anniversary in 2009; and the Ophthalmology Outpatients Department at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Aylesbury boasts a set of prints of Roald Dahl’s characters, gifted to them by Quentin in 2016. There are certainly others. All these works are much valued in the spaces they occupy, but the drawings weren’t created with the hospital setting in mind, so, sadly, are not shown here.<br/><br/>But with sprightly elders, swimming babies, friendly aliens, helpful dragons, treetop adventures and poignant landscapes, there are plenty of unexpected delights to discover – all in Quentin’s ‘illustrated hospital’.' Quentin Blake