‘It’s no use at all,’ says Posy Simmonds in mock despair, holding up her hands. ‘I can’t tell my left from my right.’ She is ambidextrous. ‘This hand [her right] writes and draws; and this hand [her left] cuts out, sharpens pencils, throws balls, plays tennis… I can’t drive. I’ve never taken a test. I’m always on the wrong side of the road.’
Looking at these wonderful hands, elegant and almost limp, one would never suppose they had created, over the past 50 years, such a large volume of intensely enjoyable and astute drawings. Reliably funny and wise, her work ranges from Fred (1988), about the secret rock-star life of a pet cat, to Cassandra Darke (2018), a graphic novel with an art dealer anti-heroine who is part Scrooge, part Clarissa Dickson-Wright.
Simmonds is being celebrated with a UK retrospective, at the House of Illustration in King’s Cross. ‘It feels very weird…’ she tells me.
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