This is an interview I did in 2007(!) while on work experience at the Independent. It fell through the cracks but I just found it –– it’s massively out of date of course but maybe a little but of the great Quentin shines through. It’s all about his take on culture. Here it is anyway:

Books

“I’m always reading at least two books at the same time, sometimes four or five, some I never finish, but those two I did.” 

Music

“I’m not a very active music listener, I go to prom once a year but I listen to quite a lot on CD and the last thing I listened to were recordings of Verdi’s opera Don Carlo. Also, the Dixie Land Jazz Band. I don’t know anything about jazz but I rather like it. Also songs by Josephine Baker. I don’t know anything about popular music. I know a lot of illustrators listen to the radio when they’re working but I almost never listen to the radio because I stop to listen to words and I get distracted.”   

Film

“I don’t watch films at home much, I tend to watch parts of films on television. The other day I saw the first half of East is East, of which I saw the second half perhaps a year before. If I’m working, I stop for a break and I’m always on the look out for black and white films on television during the day, but I don’t watch more than quarter of an hour or 20 minutes and I have to go back to work again.  

I got Hue and Cry out of the video library, it’s a postwar film of the forties or fifties and it stood up quite well, it had Harry Fowler and Jack Warner in it. It was quite interesting because you could sort of tell the period it was made from the lighting, it was rather like a painting of the time.” 

Theatre

“I’m very enthusiastic about theatre but I don’t go very often because I’m either very pleased or not very pleased and I tend to leave half way through to go away and talk about the bits in scene 1. It was wonderful for me to see Simon Russell Beal with Alex Jennings at close range, it was wonderful to see how they interpreted pieces by Roald Dahl. (Beal and Jennings read out extracts from Roald Dahl’s children’s stories while Blake illustrated them and they were projected on the screen for the audience at the National Theatre).”  

Exhibitions

“I saw the exhibition of Velazquez, the handling and technique is amazing because it appears in the later paintings to be very freewheeling but in fact it depicts exactly what he wants you to see. And I think also it’s interesting that he is able to give such a degree of significance when he only appears to be painting what is in front of him. There are very few pictures that are mythological or symbolic, they are mostly just of people in front of him and he seems to be able to give them a depth of meaning which you wouldn’t expect. I went to Petit Palais in Paris just before Christmas to see Rembrandt’s etchings, which were wonderful and well shown.” 

quentinblake.com