Allan Ahlberg, the children’s author and poet whose writing touched the lives of countless families, died this week. He was 87.
Shed of dreams: Allan Ahlberg wrote many of his 150 books at the end of his garden
Ahlberg was born in Croydon in 1938.
Working with his illustrator wife Janet Ahlberg, together they produced a host of bestselling nursery classics including Burglar Bill, Peepo!, and Each Peach Pear Plum.
After Janet’s death, from breast cancer, aged 50, Allan Ahlberg worked with illustrators such as Raymond Briggs and Bruce Ingman, and eventually with daughter Jessica Ahlberg, their works including Half A Pig.
Ahlberg was an illegitimate child, and in the months before the outbreak of World War II, he was adopted and brought up in Oldbury, in Sandwell in the West Midlands. He described his upbringing as being in “a very poor working-class family” and identified himself as the baby in one of his most popular books Peepo!.
“My parents loved me and they did me a huge service saving me from growing up in a children’s home,” he said in 2006, “but there were a fair few clips round the ear, no books and not much conversation.”
After grammar school and National Service, Ahlberg worked as a postman, plumber’s mate and gravedigger. But his life took a different turn when the head of Oldbury’s parks and cemeteries heard he had A-levels, and decided Ahlberg should become a teacher. “I didn’t think it was such a good idea,” Ahlberg recalled in 2011. “I was very shy – I found it embarrassing to buy a bus ticket. But he got me to put my suit on and have a wash and a clean-up and he took me to one or two schools, just to visit, just to get the feel of it.”
It was while they were both studying at teacher training college in Sunderland that Ahlberg met Janet Hall. They married in 1969, and moved to live near Leicester, Ahlberg teaching in a primary school while Janet worked as an illustrator.
Janet despaired of the dull material she was commissioned to draw, and she asked her husband to write her a story. “It was as if she turned a key in my back and I was off,” Allan Ahlberg recalled later.
In 1975, the Ahlbergs published their first book together, Here Are The Brick Street Boys. In 1976, The Old Joke Book followed.
The couple’s reputation was established in 1978 with Each Peach Pear Plum, hailed as “a work of genius” by one critic and Janet’s illustrations earning her the prestigious Kate Greenaway Medal.
Family business: Janet’s drawing of her, Allan and baby Jessica, and the pet cat
Peepo! saw Ahlberg return to his childhood with a day in the life of a baby in a working-class family during the war. Cut-out circles offer the reader a peek of what’s to come. The book’s secret was “all in the engineering”, Ahlberg said.
“You have to turn the page in order to see something – it’s a whole string of little suspenses, almost like in a theatre.”
With daughter Jessica as its inspiration, The Jolly Postman took five years to plan, write and draw, a story of deliveries to fairytale characters complete with envelopes containing letters and cards. The Jolly Postman has sold 6million copies since it was published, winning the Kurt Maschler Award.
The second in the series, The Jolly Christmas Postman, won a second Kate Greenaway Medal.
Janet’s death in 1994 left Ahlberg and his then 15-year-old daughter in despair.
Once he began writing again, Ahlberg moved to a new publisher, where he met the editor Vanessa Clarke, who he later married, and collaborated with other illustrators, including, ultimately, his daughter.
Ahlberg wrote more than 150 books over his career, many of which were written in a shed at the bottom of his garden.
Tributes to Ahlberg flooded in after his death was announced.
“You were a pioneer of great children’s literature, both in picture books and poetry,” former children’s laureate Michael Rosen tweeted.
“You were clever, funny and wise. My children loved your books. So did and so do I.”
Francesca Dow, head of children’s literature at Penguin Random House, said: “Allan was one of the most extraordinary authors I have had the privilege and pleasure to work with.
Prolific and profound: the work of the Ahlbergs, witty and funny and beautifully illustrated, has been a part of millions of childhoods since the 1970s
“His brilliant books – so many of them created with his late wife, Janet, the highly talented illustrator – have been described as ‘mini masterpieces’.
“Allan’s are some of the very best – true classics, which will be loved by children and families for years to come. Dear Allan, we will all miss you enormously.”
His book Woof!, about a little boy who turns into a dog, was turned into a television series that ran for eight years.
In 2014, Allan Ahlberg turned down a lifetime achievement award after discovering it was sponsored by Amazon.
Meanwhile, Ahlberg kept working in his shed. “I’m like a dripping tap,” he said. “As I get older I drip more slowly, but I still come down here. I’m less impatient to spend hour after hour writing, though I like it as much as ever.”
- Allan Ahlberg, writer, born Croydon June 5, 1938, died Bath, July 29, 2025, aged 87
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Born in Croydon indeed but that’s his only connection. He never looked back