A celebration of the life and work of Harry Horse

ALAN SIMPSON, director of The Last Polar Bears

When we first decided to make an animated TV special based on Harry's book The Last Polar Bears, we arranged to meet him. As the book is a diary written by a grandfather, I expected to meet a frail old man. I was surprised when this young energetic giant of a man bounded into the studio with his wife Mandy and dog Roo. We all got on really well, and Harry and I soon discovered that we liked the same illustrators and had a similar taste in music. Harry told me that while writing the book he listened to a track by the Penguin Caf Orchestra. Later he sent me a tape of "the music that inspired me whilst writing The Last Polar Bears". And on the B-side were his dog Roo's favourite songs. Roo had very good taste; her favourite song was Old Blue sung by The Byrds. I'm playing it now and thinking of Harry, a unique and wonderful man. I'm glad I knew him.

PS: The Penguin Caf song that inspired Harry while writing The Last Polar Bears was Cutting Branches To Make A Temporary Shelter. When I play that I imagine Harry sitting in a snow-bound cottage writing and illustrating his wonderful books. God bless you, Harry.

CAROLINE SHELDON, HARRY'S LITERARY AGENT

For Harry, every book was a deeply-felt work of art, every word was almost jewel-like. Churning stuff out was absolutely alien to him. I loved working with him - it wasn't always the easiest role because he was such a perfectionist about his work and the way other people handled it, but it was rewarding for precisely that reason.

This is a huge loss to our artistic community. He was a complete individual. He didn't go to university, didn't go to art school. He did it all the hard way. And yet he was one of the few really great draftsmen working in the art world today, one of the few whose illustrations you look at and are instantly moved. With his books he had the power to get right into a child's mind. In many ways he was a man from another age. A polymath whose nature and sensibility were alien to the demands and vagaries of modern commercial life. Someone very special and different has passed.

MARC LAMBERT, SCOTTISH BOOK TRUST

I first met Harry through the Edinburgh Book Festival - he had fallen out with a previous director and I was very pleased to have been able to help coax him back, because the guy was a genius. There is no other word to describe him. One of the brightest talents of his generation, across literature and art. And like all geniuses, he could be difficult, uncompromising, awkward. You felt he had that right because he was so gifted, and because he had such a big heart, a lot of passion, he really cared about his work and his loved ones. Spending even half an hour with him was always stimulating and entertaining and life-affirming.

Mandy Suhr, Picture Book Publisher, Puffin

I feel extremely privileged to have worked with Harry. A hugely talented illustrator and writer, Harry spent the last few years focusing on a series of beautifully crafted picture books featuring Little Rabbit, an endearing "every child" facing the trials of growing up. The stories both pull at the heart-strings and make you laugh out loud, brilliantly capturing the nature of human behaviour. This was one of Harry's greatest gifts, and although set in a nostalgic world, the stories speak directly to the modern child and parent.

Harry's wife Mandy was his collaborator and played an enormous part in the creation of the books. Roo and Chiquita, their much-loved dogs, and the beautiful landscape of Burra also provided great inspiration. Last year was extremely difficult for Harry as he struggled to work and care for Mandy through her serious illness, so I was amazed and delighted when Little Rabbit's Christmas, the fifth in the series, landed on my desk. It is so very sad to think that this will be Harry's last book, but in true "Harry style" it is extraordinary and perfect - a fitting tribute to Harry and Mandy. I shall miss him enormously.

Yvonne Hooker, senior editor, Puffin

In 1992 a knotted parcel of tea-stained paper arrived in our slush pile - it was the manuscript of The Last Polar Bears and it heralded the arrival of an exceptional talent in the world of children's books, one which has graced and delighted readers of all ages ever since.

I was Harry's fiction editor for 10 years at Puffin, and was privileged to work on three of the Roo books with him. How wonderful to be the first reader of Roo and Grandfather's amazing journeys into worlds that only Harry could have dreamed up. I truly believe he was a genius. We shall miss him terribly, but we are absolutely sure that his books will carry on delighting children for many years to come.

RICHARD DEMARCO, art impresario

I was extremely sad to hear of the death of the man I always knew as Harry The Horse. He came to my gallery on Edinburgh's Melville Street when he was a very young man, wanting me to show his work. The problem was that he was an illustrator and the content made it unsellable as art at the time. He understood that - we had a friendship over the years, and he developed into something more than a cartoonist. He became quite a serious artist, with a real edge. His writing was also important - it had real bite to it, a quality of truth. It's so sad to think how isolated Harry and his wife were on that island, a loving group of humans and animals. The despair that must have been in his heart to take the responsibility that he did, it has a resonance that is difficult to take on board. When I think of his sense of fun, his enjoyment of life ...

I do believe that Scotland has lost a very powerful talent, with the quality you find in John Gilroy or even George Hogart. His work was a contribution to the history of the cultural life of this country, but he was also operating on a global scale. We needed his world view, his humanity, his capacity to make judgements and demands on the political sphere and beyond. The tragedy is that he had a lot more to say.

Ellie Rothnay, former producer of Aberdeen Word Festival

This is really sad news, but Harry always walked his own path ... he was a favourite of mine, and when we did our first Word festival I was delighted that we managed to get him on the programme. Because of some mix-up he was only scheduled for one event, but when he turned up he thought he would be doing two or three. So we had a rather nervous student run through and tell us: "Harry Horse is here, and he wants some pens and a flip-chart so he can do an event right now." We went out to meet him and explain that we didn't have an audience ready for him, and he gave us what for: "I didn't come all this way just to do one event!"

So we roped in some children off the street, and he proceeded to do the most wonderful hour-and-a-half event. He did personalised portraits of everyone. It was one of the most magical things that ever happened at the festival.

Donald Smith, Scottish Storytelling Centre

Harry was an incredibly original illustrator - he had his own distinctive and offbeat angle on the world, and a genius for expressing that to both children and adults. He will be completely irreplacable because he was was so unique. They just don't produce them like that any more. His death is a total scunner all round.

Terry Anderson, Chris Sommerville, Derek Gray, Brian Flynn, Tommy Sommerville and Edd Travers, SCOTTISH CARTOON ART STUDIO

We were always greatly impressed by his work. His last run for the Sunday Herald was quite unlike anything else being published at the moment, a fusion of traditional, savagely satirical political cartooning with more elegiac forms of illustration, prose and poetry. We can only guess as to the agony he and his wife must have endured in the final stages of her illness. Certainly their suffering is at an end, but with it comes the loss of a uniquely talented artist.

MARTIN C STRONG, writer of The Great Rock Discography (illustrated by Harry Horse)

I was always drawn to Harry's art. I'm interested in illustration myself, but I could never come anywhere near the kind of stuff he did. I've just been going through the old editions of the Discography, which is something I don't usually do, and I was really struck by his work all over again. I think the most poignant piece is something he did for the first edition, a winged angel-like pose of Kurt Cobain. That was drawn way before Cobain died, which is an interesting example of the kind of insight Harry always had.

RICHARD WALKER, EDITOR OF THE SUNDAY HERALD

I'll miss the chats to discuss his weekly drawings, which usually started with a tirade against Blair or Bush or John Reid or whoever had infuriated him that particular week but which would take unexpected twists and turns around rock songs, reggae music, Celebrity Big Brother, Wayne Rooney or whatever else had caught his attention during the previous few days. I'll miss his absolute refusal to make his drawings easier to understand, or to tie them more specifically to current events, his confidence that readers would get it, would understand the references, would appreciate his confidence in their intelligence. I'll miss the way he struggled with the words that accompanied his drawings in the Sunday Herald, determined to make sure they weren't ever a mere explanation but added to the overall message he was trying to deliver. I'll miss the stories - how as a 14-year-old schoolboy he phoned Bob Dylan's home to explain how much the music meant to him only to be told never to use the number again; how he had blagged jobs by using references from non-existent executives. I'll miss the praise, when he'd say how brave it was of a newspaper to give him such latitude when what he really meant was: "Don't EVER try to tell me what to do." I'll miss the rants, I'll miss the rage. I'll miss the art. I thank God I knew him.