C. Walter Hodges

Cyril Walter Hodges was born in Beckenham, Kent, the son of Cyril Hodges, "a leading figure in advertising and copyrighting". He was educated at Dulwich College, which he recalled as "a wretched imprisonment", and at Goldsmiths' College of Art. Hodges fell in love with Greta Becker, a hopeful ballet dancer, and they married in 1936. She provided "complete domestic support" until she died in 1999. Hodges spent most of his career as a freelance illustrator. For many years he did line drawings for the Radio Times. He also produced its 1938 Christmas edition. Among the writers for children with whom he collaborated as an illustrator were Ian Serraillier, Rosemary Sutcliff (The Eagle of the Ninth), Rhoda Power (Redcap Runs Away), Elizabeth Goudge (The Little White Horse) and William Mayne. During a year spent in New York he wrote and illustrated Columbus Sails (1939), a work of historical fiction for children. It proved popular on both sides of the Atlantic. Its success eventually led to several others including The Namesake: A Story Of King Alfred and its sequel The Marsh King; Magna Carta; The Norman Conquest; and The Spanish Armada (1964 to 1967). The Namesake was a commended runner up for the annual Carnegie Medal, which recognises the author of the year's best British children's book. ==Theatre==

Hodges designed costumes and scenery for the Everyman Theatre, Liverpool (1928–30) and for the Mermaid Theatre and St George's Hall, London in the 1950s. His love of theatre led to him becoming an authority on the construction of the Globe and other theatres of Shakespeare's time. From 1935 to 1999 he both wrote and illustrated five books about theatre in that time. He had thirty years experience in theatre practice and scholarship before doing ''Shakespeare's Theatre'' for children, published by Oxford University Press in 1964. For that he won the annual Kate Greenaway Medal from the Library Association, recognising the year's best children's book illustration by a British subject. Because the Folger makes its digital image collection available under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license, the drawings are now free cultural works. ==Selected works==

Books by Walter Hodges • The Globe Restored: A Study of the Elizabethan Theatre (1935) • Columbus Sails (1939) • Shakespeare and the Players (1948) • ''Shakespeare's Theatre'' (1964) • The Namesake: A Story of King Alfred (1964) • Magna Carta (1966) • The Norman Conquest (1966) • The Marsh King: A Story of King Alfred (1967, sequel to The Namesake) • The Spanish Armada (1967) • The Overland Launch (1969, about the 1899 episode from Lynmouth Lifeboat Station) • ''Shakespeare's Second Globe: The Missing Monument'' (1973) • The Battlement Garden: Britain from the Wars of the Roses to the Age of Shakespeare (1979) • Enter the Whole Army: A Pictorial Study of Shakespearean Staging, 1576–1616 (1999) Books by others illustrated by Hodges • Margaret J. Baker, The Shoe Shop Bears (1964), Hannibal and the Bears (1965) • Robert Browning, The Pied Piper of Hamelin (1971) • Elizabeth Goudge, The Little White Horse (1946), Smokey House (1939), Sister of the Angels (1939), ''The Dean's Watch (1960), Make-Believe'' (1949) • Alfred Duggan, Growing Up in Thirteenth-Century England (1962) • Ruth Manning-Sanders, 'Red Indian Folk and Fairy Tales (1960) • Rosemary Sutcliff, The Chronicles of Robin Hood (1950); The Queen Elizabeth Story (1950); ''The Armourer's House (1951); Brother Dusty-Feet (1952); The Eagle of the Ninth (1954); The Shield Ring'' (1957) • Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn (1955) • Mary Macgregor, ''Stories of King Arthur's Knights'' (1946?) ==See also==