Crossing Places – an interview with author and illustrator Errol Lloyd


As an artist, an illustrator, a sculptor, a playwright, an author of fiction and information titles and as a musician, Errol Lloyd’s accomplishments span an impressive range of disciplines. Jake Hope speaks to Errol about the influences that shaped his career, and looks at how Errol’s own work has had a positive impact on others.


REFLECTING on his childhood in Jamaica and the things that have influenced his career and interests, Errol thinks back to nursery school and playing with Plasticine. But when it came to school, he says: “There wasn’t a good [one] in my town, so I had to board out.” He remembers the family he stayed with having a carving of a little dog, Toby, which always impressed him a great deal.


And Errol did not grow up in a household with a lot of books. He was into sports as a boy and describes his childhood as having been “fairly conventional”, adding: “It was not the sort of background that you’d think would lead me into books.”


It was at boarding school, which Errol describes as being modelled along British public school lines, where he became interested in reading. He was around 13 years old at the time, and says it happened through the discovery of The Hardy Boys books, based around two brothers, Frank and Joe, who Errol described as being “quite rich” and having “a lovely lifestyle. They drove cars and had boats.”


Spring-Summer 2021


Their adventures and privileged lifestyle appealed to Errol as he imagined himself doing those things. Alongside The Hardy Boys, Errol also enjoyed The Readers Digest, which he discovered through a friend of his father whose car boot was full of back issues of the publication. The eclectic articles suited Errol’s tastes and one of the columns that particularly appealed was It Pays to Increase Your Word Power. “It gave four words and you had to have a go at matching the definition. It was meant for adults, so from an early age I began to acquire quite a good vocabulary. Once you have a vocabulary it can lead you to more sophisticated expression,” Errol explains.


His learning occasionally led him into trouble and Errol describes a time when a teacher accused him of plagiarism on an essay that had been set. He says: “I had to defend myself and he couldn’t prove it. Also where would you copy something like that?”


The teacher concerned was only at the school for a term, and would later go on to become Prime Minister of Jamaica! A visitor to the school who made a particular impression on Errol was a


Yorkshireman named Alan Hatfield. He brought with him some terracotta heads that he had sculpted. Seeing that Errol was interested in these, he invited him to create one and Errol’s talent was apparent. Errol went on to study art at A-level, the only student in the school who opted to do so. He had an Israeli teacher who had studied in England and was an early influence on Errol, who says: “It was a terrific privilege and an asset having a young, very modern and talented teacher.”


Errol left Jamaica in September 1963, not to pursue art, but to study law at the Council of Legal Education in London. Errol had grown up with lots of lawyers visiting the house, as his father had been a civil servant in the court system. His flight had to be diverted from Heathrow to Prestwick airport, in Glasgow. “I reckon in retrospect it must have been a cultural shock. Certainly the weather was!” Errol remembers preparing himself for the cold by reading John Keats’ poem The Eve of St Agnes, which he felt gave a graphic sense of how it was to be cold. He also used to place his hands in the freezer compartment of


PEN&INC. 19


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59