Ronda and David Armitage's The Lighthouse Keeper's Lunch recently celebrated its 40th anniversary.  We are delighted to be joined by Ronda and David Armitage who have written a guest blog about the latest title in the massively popular series, The Lighthouse Keeper's Mystery and are lucky enough to be able to provide a behind-the-scenes glimpse at the development of some of the book's artwork.  

In 1974 accompanied by two young children Ronda and David came to London for a working holiday expecting to be here for a couple of years.

Six months later they moved to East Sussex and soon the family found itself standing on the top of the famous white chalky crumbling cliffs  looking down at the Beachy Head lighthouse near Eastbourne.  Previous to this trip David had been looking for work calling on assorted publishers initially clutching some of his book design work. He observed that the queue for those carrying illustrations was shorter so illustrated several well known fairy tales to show what he could do.

An editor at Hamish Hamilton, then one of the great children's publishers, liked them and suggested that if Ronda could write a story and David could do some run up illustrations he could be very interested.

Ronda had always loved reading and as an adult taught young children just as the wave of wonderful and less expensive picture books came onto the market so although she thought it was a ridiculous idea she didn’t completely dismiss it.

As the family stood on the cliffs our son noticed a line running down to the lighthouse. ‘Whats that for Dad?’ he asked. David likes to amuse, so his reply was that the line was for the lighthouse keepers lunch.

Ronda might have ignored that throwaway line if that editor had not suggested writing a story. So Ronda stored it away and in her head began to work out a tale.

‘The Lighthouse Keepers Lunch has been in print since 1977 and Ronda and David  have lived in East Sussex ever since.

David and Ronda come from Tasmania and New Zealand respectively.  Ronda’s parent  bought a farm in the ‘back of beyond’ when Ronda was 12 years old. From the verandah we could see a beautiful bay surrounded by hills and cliffs. Further out was an island and at night Ronda went to sleep watching a lighthouse light way in the distance.The sea became part of our lives.  We swam, we fished, we played in boats and raced round the rocks seeing who could leap most skilfully.

Ronda discovered her first octopus and tried to carry it to show the friends but it wriggled so much that she returned it to a pool.

Although a number of people camped or visited the bay in the summer holidays rubbish was not a problem.  Now photos from around the world show the horrendous piles of rubbish in rivers, lakes and of course in the sea with many creatures mistaking it for food.  Life in the sea is in danger.

In 2002 The Lighthouse Keeper's Christmas was published and after eight books about  Mr Grinling, he retired from being a Lighthouse Keeper.  David and Ronda thought they had written their last Lighthouse Keeper title.

The books have remained popular, particularly in schools for topic  work with Key Stage One. David Wood who has written many plays for children rewrote the first book  as a musical which was  first performed in Oxford Playhouse in 2000 but there have been many performances based on the eight lighthouse books shown around the world.

So Ronda and David  settled to doing different things. There were already other books that they had worked on together but David decided he would like to spend more time painting and the books Ronda wrote were illustrated by others. They were so used to working together that at first Ronda would insist on helping the illustrator just as she and David had done as they worked through a story. But this is not what usually happens.The illustrator and the writer very rarely meet until perhaps the illustrations are completed. Fortunately before too long she realised perhaps that was not a good idea. An illustrator needs to have their own ideas about the illustrations.

As we know climate change is having a massive affect on our world and is already causing many changes to the environment and to peoples lives.

Attention has focused on people such  as Greta Thunberg and David Attenborough who have spelt out very clearly what needs to happen to avoid catastrophe.

When Scholastic suggested another story about the Grinling family, it seemed to David and Ronda a possible way to introduce some aspects of the contamination of the sea with characters who are already known to many children and in a way that they could understand.  It also encourages children to play a part in keeping the seaside clean.  The emphasis was on rubbish rather than just plastic for obvious reasons.  We also wanted to show the disasters that can happen when the sea becomes contaminated.