Foxwood Tales was conceived in 1974 as the result of a meeting with myself and the CEO of Dean’s books.

At that meeting I presented him with a range of my illustrations for greetings cards and he

picked out a particular image of a cute baby hedgehog being handed a lollipop over the counter

of a woodland store by the shop owner, a gruff old Badger.

"If you could developed that and find an author," he said, it might make a nice series of books.

He gave me a 16 page blank book to prepare as a mock up after which I ran outside to the

phone box across the street and rang my wife to see if she could write children's stories

because if she could then there was a chance we might be able to get published. She said

she didn't know if she could but would have a go and so began our first adventure into publishing.

Several months went by and as the story and illustrations began to come together I somehow felt Deans wouldn't quite be the right fit for me and so when my mock up was complete I showed it around to one or two other editors.

Disappointed with that outcome I put my illustrations in the bottom drawer of a large plan chest I used where I worked in Great Malborogh Street in London as a freelance in house illustrator for the British Printing Corporation, and forgot about them. Over time and bit by bit they migrated to the back of the drawer where they lay undisturbed for about for five or six years.

Time went by and in my early thirties I decided to take the plunge and become fully self sufficient working permanently from my attic studio in our home in Henley-On -Thames, having built up a good commercial client base as well as making a regular income from illustrating greetings cards.

It was whilst clearing out my London office prior to my move to home working that I re-discovered the old 16 page mock up as well as the forgotten illustrations which I was pleasantly surprised still looked quite good for something I created at a time when my talents hadn't quite matured.

So determining that I would make this into a 32 page book I slowly doubled up on the

illustrations in my spare time. This meant after doing a hard day's commercial work

to pay the bills I would spent my evenings working on Foxwood, usually until 3 o'clock

in the morning, slowly doubling up the book to have 32 pages of illustrations to

accompany the story that Cynthia had written all those years before.

Once everything was ready I made appointments with four top London publishers of

children's books ( back in the day when you could meet with an editor to discuss things)

and all four on that same day wanted to publish the work I had presented to them.

It was a day I shall never foget.

In the end Andre Detch was chosen as they were the first on the list of publishers I met with on that glorious day and I promised them that if I did not receive a better offer, other than the standard one, from any of the other publishers I had lined up to meet with, then I would go back to them and take up their offer. Which is                                        what I did and the rest is history.

However Andre Deutsch wanted to make a splash and launch with two books for maximum impact so another year went by whilst the second book was completed and both were finally published, in the summer of 1985.  In the same week as our first child was born.

Six more books followed over the years and if anyone looks closely enough and compares all eight books in the order they were created they will see how the characters changed and matured as time went by. Firstly unclothed as nature intended then gradually acquiring costumes. Initially dressing up for the Foxwood Regatta and then wearing even

more clothes to keep warm in the first winter story ~ The Foxwood Kidnap.