Printmaker and illustrator Angela Harding's seasonal quartet transports readers to her favourite UK landscapes

If you’re a fellow fan of printmaker Angela Harding, you might currently be enjoying her advent calendar, as I am. Opening the doors on her glorious wintry scenes featuring wild birds and animals—and the occasional whippet—has become an annual December treat.

When I visit Angela Harding’s cosy headquarters in Oakham, Rutland, one of her now six-strong team is heading out to the post office, weighed down with outgoing mail order parcels of Harding merchandise.
“The sleigh is very full today,” she calls cheerily as she leaves. Meanwhile, Harding and I sit down to chat over tea and biscuits in her showroom, next to shelves displaying her instantly recognisable prints on cushions, jigsaws, bags, tea towels and more. And, on the walls, some framed versions. My eyes are particularly drawn to a magnificent red deer print, created while Harding was artist-in-residence on the Knepp Estate in Sussex.

One result of that residency was Wilding, richly illustrated by Harding and written by author and doyenne of Knepp, Isabella Tree. It is one of three books published in 2024 that Harding has written and/or illustrated; the others are Blossomise, a new collection of nature-themed poems by Simon Armitage, and Harding’s own book, Still Waters & Wild Waves, which published in September. “Still Waters is my most personal book to date. I think it most reflects how I live,” she tells me. As she explains in the book, Harding and her husband spend extended periods of the year away from home, sailing eastern coastal waters on their boat, Windsong. In late spring and early summer, she also spent several weeks living and working on Fair Isle in Scotland. All this, and she contributed the illustration for the official 2024 Books Are My Bag tote bag, too.

Harding’s yearning to be close to nature has always been at the heart of her work. Now 64, she was born in Stoke-on-Trent, the middle of three daughters, all of whom went to art school. It was a craft-orientated household—her mother worked as a stone carver in churches for a time while her teacher-father influenced the young Angela’s taste for poetry and literature. From the time she was a small girl, Harding was “bird-obsessed”. She explains: “While other kids had posters of pop stars on their bedroom walls, I had ‘Birds of the World’. My first job when I was 11 was working at Alton Towers, leading the donkeys up and down for rides. The very first thing I bought with my wages was a pair of binoculars.”

For a long time, because I didn’t do particularly well at school, I always felt that writing was for the higher echelons of society, and not for me

Later, while studying art, and specialising in printmaking at what was then Leicester Polytechnic, she eschewed student life in the city in favour of digs in the Leicestershire countryside. She cycled in each day and would often bring home roadkill or even the dead crows and jays that hung from gamekeepers’ gibbets to practise drawing animal anatomy: “Now my work is more emotionally than anatomically based, but I still feel that understanding underneath what I do.”

Harding’s creative career was put on hold for a time after she had her two children, but she did some work for an arts consultancy which involved commissioning other artists. “That taught me a lot about the business of being an artist. It was probably as important a training as art college,” she reflects. Once her children were older, Harding began to get her foot back in the door with gallery work, designs for greetings cards and, then, regular illustration commissions for magazines including Gardens Illustrated, BBC Countryfile and Country Living. Her first book commission came in 2016 when Faber asked her to create a cover design for the John Keats volume in its Nature Poets series.

Since then, she has created covers for books by authors including P D James, James Rebanks and Katya Balen, for her Yoto Carnegie-winning novel, October, October. “My book covers always have to feel connected to something I’ve experienced,” she says. For example, the huge barn owl that features in the powerful illustration for October, October was inspired by walking through a wood and encountering an owl “that almost knocked [her] over”. Now, she is also enjoying the writing that goes in tandem with creating her own books. “For a long time, because I didn’t do particularly well at school [Harding is dyslexic], I always felt that writing was for the higher echelons of society, and not for me.”

Though she has been making prints for more than 40 years, Harding’s huge popularity has largely built up over the last decade, and—alongside such boosting factors as the lockdown jigsaw boom—books have played an integral part. She enjoys the democracy of book work as well as its collaborative nature: “The gallery world is aimed at a particular stratum of society, whereas anybody can walk into a bookshop. My only qualm with books is: why is the illustrator’s name so often printed only in tiny point size?”

Before I leave Rutland, Harding generously invites me to visit her home studio in the garden of her village house a few miles away. It is a simple shed space with glorious views over rolling countryside. As the winter
sun begins to sink in the sky, casting shades reminiscent of those from the silk screens she uses to colour her prints, Harding shows me some of the intricate vinyl and lino cuts that are the source of her beloved artworks. Created with simple chisel tools, they demonstrate the wonderfully tactile nature of the printmaker’s craft which underpins the dynamic and sensuous appeal of the finished artworks.

In 2025, Sphere will publish a series of four small hardbacks from Harding. First, Spring Unfurled in February, followed by Summer’s Hum, Falling into Autumn and Winter’s Song. Each 80-page title takes readers on a seasonal journey across Harding’s favourite UK landscapes—among them, the Scottish wilderness, the Suffolk marshlands, the hills of Yorkshire and the views from Harding’s own home studio. Each will feature prints taken from her three previous books. Says Harding: “I like the small gift format and the price point (£12.99) which makes them more affordable than my previous books.”

Otherwise, 2025 is planned as a year off from publishing deadlines and book events. But her legions of fans will be pleased to hear that creative work will continue, particularly during another planned Fair Isle residency. “I’m a woman of a certain age, so it’s good to stay visible,” Harding says, with typical modesty.