John Burningham

Burningham was born 27 April 1936, in Farnham, Surrey, England, to Charles and Jessie (Mackintosh) Burningham. He entered the Central School of Art when he was 20 and graduated in 1959. Fleming had suggested cartoonist "Trog" (Wally Fawkes) of the Daily Mail, but the newspaper would not allow the illustrator of their popular Flook strip to work for an author whose James Bond stories were adapted as a comic strip for its arch-rival Daily Express. Fleming consulted his motor engineer friend Charles Amherst Villiers, who produced a sketch based on Fleming's description of the magical car—this drawing was passed to Cape's popular new illustrator John Burningham, who was asked to illustrate the whole series on the strength of his debut story Borka. Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang was originally published in three volumes, 1964–1965; the omnibus edition followed in 1968. Burningham's witty and timeless art-work, along with Fleming's imaginative text, led Chitty to become the most famous and best loved car in English-language fiction. ==Selected works==

Burningham both wrote and illustrated almost all of his published books. The exceptions are listed here: • Borka: The Adventures of a Goose with No Feathers (Jonathan Cape, 1963) • ABC (Cape, 1964); also ''John Burningham's ABC'' • Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang: The Magical Car by Ian Fleming (Cape, three vols. October 1964 to January 1965) • The Extraordinary Tug-of-war retold by Letta Schatz (Follett, 1968) • Seasons (Cape, 1969) • ''Mr Gumpy's Outing'' (Cape, 1970) • Around the World in Eighty Days (Cape, 1972) • ''Mr Gumpy's Motor Car'' (Cape, 1973) • Come away from the water, Shirley (Cape, 1977) • Time to get out of the bath, Shirley (Cape, 1978) • The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame (Kestrel, 1983)—an edition of the 1908 classic • Granpa (Cape, 1984) • ''Where's Julius?'' (Cape, 1986) • ''There's Going to Be a New Baby'' (Walker Books, 2011), illustrated by Helen Oxenbury—husband and wife, their first collaboration ==Works about Burningham==

• John Burningham, John Burningham (2009) • D. Martin, "John Burningham", in Douglas Martin, The Telling Line: Essays on Fifteen Contemporary Book Illustrators (Julia MacRae Books, 1989), pp. 215–27 ==References==