Allan Ahlberg (and more Moore)

 Sad to hear the news that the children's author Allan Ahlberg has died, albeit at a ripe age (unlike his wife and collaborator Janet, who sadly died aged just 50). Between them the Ahlbergs created some of the best children's books of their time, several of them true classics which will surely endure as long as children's books are read: Each Peach Pear Plum, Peepo, Burglar Bill and Funnybones, at least. Later in his career he also wrote a rather wonderful autobiographical work, The Bucket: Memories of an Inattentive Childhood, in the crisp, never waste a word style of the children's books. 'My mother, who was not my mother, I see her now, her raw red cleaner's hands twisting away at her apron, as she struggled to speak. Adoption was a shameful business then in many people's eyes, the babies being mostly illegitimate' – as was Ahlberg, born in South London and taken by his adoptive parents to Oldbury in the West Midlands. His childhood there, loving but impoverished, is very much the one we see, in all its fondly recalled detail, in Peepo. 
  One of the pleasures of grandparenthood is sharing with the grandchildren books that we read to their parents, and it has been a joy rediscovering those Ahlberg classics. What a legacy Allan and Janet left. 

(And here, as an addendum to Wednesday's post, is Gerald Moore again, this time accompanying Janet Baker in Richard Strauss's beautiful 'Morgen', the last of his Four Last Songs –