Judith Kerr's Creatures ─ A Celebration of the Life and Work of Judith Kerr

A lavishly illustrated retrospective in celebration of the 90th birthday of Judith Kerr, author of The Tiger Who Came to Tea and many other iconic books.

Her story begins with the extraordinary events of her early childhood in Berlin, dramatically cut short by the rise of Hitler’s Nazi Party in 1933. Judith tells of her family’s struggles with language and money, and what it was like to be a German refugee in London during the war.

We see her early attempts at drawing and writing; her sketches and work from art school, and her textile designs from her first job. We hear of her life-changing meeting with her future husband, the scriptwriter Nigel Kneale, and her time at the BBC, first as a reader and then as a scriptwriter herself.

Judith’s career as a children’s book writer and illustrator began after she had children, and over forty years on she is still producing classic picture books. She is a rare and wonderful talent and this is a fascinating insight into the person behind the books that have been enjoyed by generations.

Judith Kerr was born in Berlin, the daughter of a distinguished German writer. She left Germany with her family in 1933 to escape from the Nazis and they arrived in England in 1936, having spent the intervening years in Switzerland and France.She was married to the writer Nigel Kneale. Their daughter Tacy is an artist, and their son Matthew is an acclaimed novelist.In 2012, Judith was awarded an OBE for her services to children’s literature and Holocaust education