The Turner House welcomes Roald Dahl’s iconic and much-loved fictional character, The Big Friendly Giant, as part of the House of Illustration’s touring exhibition ‘The BFG in Pictures’, curated by Quentin Blake.

The exhibition contains 40 reproductions including illustrations not used when the book was first published in 1982. They chart the development of one of the most iconic characters in children’s literature and a glimpse of a BFG that might have been.

These are exhibited alongside reproductions of the final illustrations for the book, providing a fascinating insight into the collaboration between author and illustrator.

Quentin Blake says: “Roald Dahl and I were brought together by our publisher in the 1970s. Roald was an extraordinarily interesting person and a man of action, which is why he was so good at telling stories. He liked to tell stories about things happening, rather than about what people are (were?) thinking or feeling, which was wonderful for me to draw. Roald’s The BFG was first published by Jonathon Cape in 1082 in a hardback edition for which I did black-and-white illustrations and a design in colour for the cover. Since then the BFG and Sophie have appeared in a variety of books and situations. For this exhibition, I have selected images from different verisons of the BFG, starting with my first illustrations which remained published for thirty years.”