AN INDEPENDENT ARTIST

When the Central School was evacuated to Northampton in 1940 Hilary remained in London. She had been living at the family home in Oxfordshire with her mother and younger sister (her father had died some years before), but then moved into a flat in Spring Street near Paddington Station. Her neighbour there was John Parsons, a friend from art school who joined Vogue magazine in 1940, subsequently becoming its Art Director until his retirement in 1965.

In 1941 Hilary went to work for Halas and Batchelor Animation which was making short propaganda films for the Ministry of Information.

In 1942 Noel Carrington, editor of Puffin Picture books (part of Penguin) commissioned Pantomime Stories, published in February 1943. This started a very productive period during which most of Hilary's books were published.

During the Blitz Hilary volunteered as an ambulance driver based in Bethnal Green. Her sketch books and prints reflect life in London at that time; it is also vividly portrayed in Maggie the Streamlined Taxi which was published in 1943 by Transatlantic Arts, Carrington's own imprint.

The Silly Rabbits and Noah’s Ark were both published by Bantam Picture Books in 1944 and Monty’s New House, Hilary's second book for Transatlantic Arts came out later the same year. 

As the War came to an end Hilary continued her work as an author and illustrator;  Extinct Animals was published in 1945 and Freddy and Ernest in 1946. A letter to Hilary from Noel Carrington’s wife Pat indicates that Hilary was a tough negotiator:

 "I can't very well put this in your other letter, as it might not look nice if ever Allen Lane happened to see copies of the letters I send to you artists. But Noel & I wanted to tell you that you are the only artist to have the guts to stand up for itself - in fact it is entirely due to you that Puffin artists & authors are going to get 7 1/2% from now on. The Florence Nightingale or whatever of Puffin. Congratulations - Pat and Noel."

The following year Hilary did not produce any more books, but created three posters for the magazine Child Education (The Station, The High Street, and The Market).

During this period Hilary also sold illustrations for book covers and for magazines including Radio Times and Vogue and designed greeting cards for Royles and The Ward Gallery amongst others.

Visiting publishers and printers to ask for illustration work was clearly a dispiriting business, but Hilary’s diary of these trips displays a sharp eye for the humorous foibles of her tormentors:

“Saw Miss Someone or Other, a very large tough female who said ‘Oh no, there are lots of artists who can do work as good as that, you’re no better than the people we usualy (sic) employ’. Crawled out.”

“Popped in with some beastly little line drawings… Betts in a whirl with telephones to right and left, moribund old artists being trampled underfoot. Betts said ‘No, no it’s all this superficial design and lack of framework that lost us the last war, and is going to lose us this. Of course you can get away with that sort of thing in the Radio Times’. I backed out, murmuring apologies about having lost a couple of European Wars.”

Living Animals which was published by Cassell & Co in 1954 proved to be Hilary’s last published work, apart from some children’s stories that she wrote for BBC Radio’s Listen With Mother.