Since 1947, The Folio Society has produced elegantly illustrated editions of the world’s best-loved works of literature. The Book Illustration Competition, run by The Folio Society and House of Illustration, is a way of seeking out the finest talent. This year, the winner was illustrator David McConochie, who got the opportunity to see his art in The Folio Book of Ghost Stories, an anthology of such great writers as Arthur Conan Doyle, Charles Dickens, MR James, Vladimir Nabokov and AS Byatt.
For McConochie, whose work has appeared in a number of places including the Sunday Times, the Guardian, Prospect and the Financial Times, it was a case of second time lucky: “I entered the competition the previous year, when the subject was Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. I was shortlisted, so I thought I’d have another crack at it this year. I felt extremely proud, obviously, to win this time. I’ve been familiar with The Folio Society my whole life because my dad has been a member since the 1970s.”
McConochie also has a connection with ghost stories, so this project was a great fit for him as an illustrator: “I grew up in quite a small village called Brancepeth in the north-east of England, where there was a castle and legends about the ghost of a wild boar in the forest which was killed in the 13th century. So I guess I have been interested in that side of things since I was little.
“The north-east has influenced me because the landscapes up there are bleak, but they are bleak in a very beautiful way. So when I think about the Northumbrian coastline, Holy Island and all those areas that I would visit as a child, they definitely left a mark on me. I would go on holidays with the school to Holy Island and we would stay in a dormitory and we would tell ghost stories there. It certainly affected my style.”
For a picture gallery of David McConochie’s illustrations, with his comments on the inspiration for each, click here. To order a copy of The Folio Book of Ghost Stories, please visit www.foliosociety.com.
