Martin Handford

As a child

Martin Handford was born in Hampstead, London, in 1956 and spent most of his childhood drawing. "My earliest influences," he says, "were cinema epics and playing with toy soldiers. I attempted to recapture the excitement in my drawings, which started out as crowds of crude stick figures."

As an adult

Martin worked for three years in an insurance office in order to finance his degree at art college and continued to draw "what were always busy and militarily correct battle scenes". Following art college, Martin worked as a freelance illustrator specialising in drawing crowd scenes for numerous clients.

As an artist

Martin's Where's Wally books have become a worldwide phenomenon, selling more than 47 million copies worldwide in over 30 countries and 25 languages, including Egyptian, Korean and Hebrew. Each Wally picture takes Martin eight weeks to draw. "As I work my way through a picture, I add Wally when I come to what I feel is a good place to hide him," he explains. Martin describes his pictures as "full of both activity and entertainment. I have a love of situations which contain visual puns." His own favourite Wally picture is 'A Tremendous Song and Dance' from Where's Wally? In Hollywood. Wally has reached celebrity status; such is his popularity that he has appeared in the primetime American TV shows Frasier, The Simpsons and Friends, as well as on the 1000th anniversary cover of Rolling Stone magazine as a cultural icon of the last 40 years.