Friday Snapshot … Val Biro

During a recent exhibition here at Special Collections of items from Westerby Press; some dust jackets designed by Val Biro were featured.  We have quite a collection of books with his jackets in our Reserve Collection and in the Children Collection we have some of his other illustrated works particularly the Gumdrop Series published by Brockhampton Press.

Gumdrop was a real car.  An Austin Clinton Twelve-Four of 1926, which won a Vintage Concours  at Newbury and Chartridge. No one knows exactly who his former owners was. So it is reasonable to assume that Val Biro and Gumdrop may have had adventures like those in the book.

Val Biro was born in Budapest in 1921, and educated by Cistercian Monks.  He came to England in 1939 and was a fireman during the war.  After the war he worked in a publishing before becoming a freelance artist and designer.
He is probably the most widely employed designer of book jackets, and a regular contributor to the Radio Times.