I have an artist friend – let’s call him Bert – who has earned his living, more or less, all his life by his pencil/paints/silk-screen printing press. Over a shared kitchen supper he declared (okay, possibly a couple of glasses of good Rioja down) that ‘the world today couldn’t manage without us artists’.

‘Well, you would say that,’ I laughed – paraphrasing Mandy Rice-Davies, and also possibly a couple of glasses of good Rioja down myself.

He went on to give me a very long list of the things that begin their conception at the artist’s easel/fancy computer programme that requires artistic input. Paperclips. Cars. Space rockets. Packaging for everything from Andrex loo rolls to a zither. Statues (this one  is Horseman by Elisabeth Hadley).

Jewellery. Clothes and shoes.

Every electronic gadget you can think of. The icons on met office reports…..on and on the list went.

“Book covers!” I added to the pile.

“Yes,” he said, “and there are some pretty terrible examples of that.”

Another interesting discussion followed….:)

One of my favourite book covers of all time is for a non-fiction book – MAKING SHAPELY FICTION. It does what it says on the tin and in a very pleasing-to-the-eye art deco way.

I’m lucky enough to have had short stories commissioned by magazine editors and I find seeing a visual and then being asked to write a story for which that illustration would be appropriate is a great way to get the creative juices flowing.

And I’m also lucky enough to have had two books published – TO TURN FULL CIRCLE (ebook/paperback/large print/audio) and HOPE FOR HANNAH (ebook), and I’ve just had the book cover designed for the sequel to TO TURN FULL CIRCLE, which will be published in January 2014.

So, I have to concede that ‘Bert’ (giving him a pseudonym to spare his blushes!) was right. What would our books be without artwork?