Christian Birmingham

About Christian Birmingham

Christian Birmingham is a British illustrator and landscape artist best known for his illustrations for Michael Morpurgo's The Butterfly Lion (1996), which won the Smarties Book Prize.

Birmingham graduated from Exeter College of Art and Design in 1991 with a first class degree in graphic design (illustration) and won his first book contract soon after. Much of his work is on illustrated editions of classic and seasonal stories: a centenary picture-book version of C. S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Clement C. Moore's The Night Before Christmas (which has sold more than 1.5 million copies), Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Black Beauty, Dickens's A Christmas Carol and Oliver Twist, Wuthering Heights, Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen and The Little Mermaid, and Wombat Goes Walkabout. He also illustrated two Royal Mail stamp sets, for the centenary of rugby league and for the centenary of Enid Blyton's birth.

His illustration originals have been shown at the Mall Galleries and the Australian High Commission in London, and his landscapes at the New English Art Club, the Royal Society of Marine Artists and the Pastel Society. He has been shortlisted for the Kate Greenaway Medal and the Kurt Maschler Award.

For collectors

The Butterfly Lion was first published in Britain by Collins in 1996 with Birmingham's illustrations; his own site states that his work with Morpurgo also won the Whitbread Children's Book of the Year and the Red House Children's Book Award.