Ardizzone's home of Inspiration

Home to a great artist and creator of a chap called 'Tim'

Location: 130 Elgin Avenue, Westminster, W9

Description: Edward Jeffrey Irving Ardizzone, CBE (born 16 Oct 1900) was an artist, writer and illustrator, chiefly of children's books - and he lived and here from 1920 to 1972.

Ardizzone was born at Haiphong, Tonkin, French Indo-China, where his Algerian-born Italian father was on overseas government service.

He worked as an official war artist in World War II: his early experiences between Arras and Boulogne are illustrated and described in his book Baggage to the Enemy (London 1941). An extensive collection of his war pictures, as well as his wartime diaries, can be seen at The Imperial War Museum.

His best known work is the Tim series, featuring the maritime adventures of the eponymous young hero. The first book, Little Tim and the Brave Sea Captain, was published in 1936. The most famous of the books, Tim All Alone, won the British Library Association's Kate Greenaway Medal for illustration in 1956.

His style is naturalistic but subdued, featuring gentle lines and delicate watercolours, but with great attention to particular details.

He was elected to the Royal Academy of Arts in 1970, and appointed CBE in 1971. The British Library published an illustrated bibliography of his works in 2003.

Ardizzone died of a heart attack in 1979.