Group visits
Bring a group to the museum
Clubs, schools, historical societies and social groups are welcome by arrangement — £2 per head, up to 20 people, with two weeks' notice.
Book a group visitShirley Hughes was one of Britain's best-loved children's authors and illustrators, whose picture books — drawn in her own warm, densely-crosshatched style — shaped the childhoods of several generations of British readers.
Dogger and the Alfie books
Hughes wrote and illustrated more than fifty books of her own and illustrated well over two hundred more for other authors across a career spanning seven decades. Dogger, the story of a boy's search for his lost toy dog, won the 1977 Kate Greenaway Medal, the UK's top prize for children's book illustration, and is regularly named among the best British picture books ever published. Her Alfie series, following a small boy and his younger sister Annie Rose through the small dramas of early childhood, ran to many volumes and sold in the millions worldwide.
A West Kirby childhood
Hughes was born in Hoylake and brought up in West Kirby, on the Wirral peninsula, before going on to study at the Liverpool School of Art and then the Ruskin School of Drawing in Oxford. She later said her early surroundings on the Wirral coast stayed with her throughout her working life, feeding into the observant, everyday detail that became a hallmark of her illustration.
Recognition
Hughes was appointed OBE in 1999 and made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 2017 for services to literature and illustration. She continued publishing new work into her nineties, and died in 2022.
Related research
Sources & further reading
- Shirley Hughes — Wikipedia
- See also the full bibliography for this Research section
