Michael Heslop on his cover illustration for The Dark is Rising

This is a clip from Read On, a BBC schools programme broadcast on 9 February 1981. The presenter Vicki Luke reads a short passage from Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising, then the artist Michael Heslop talks about how he produced his cover illustration for the book.

I have all five books in this series with covers by Heslop. I bought them in the mid Eighties. These days his work concentrates on horse racing and golf.

Thanks to Bob Fischer for tweeting about this video. Susan Cooper fans may also be interested in my post on the 1969 Jackanory dramatisation of Over Sea, Under Stone, the first book in the series.