Remembering Mike Phillips

Mike Phillips (1961 – 2024) was the illustrator of many beloved children’s book series, including the Museum Mystery Squad, Fact-tastic Stories from Scotland’s History, Horrible Histories: Gruesome Guides and Horrible Geography.

The quality of Mike’s work never failed to astonish us. His illustrations were always full of fun and lively details, and he had a gift for breathing humour into any situation. His ability to take a straight illustration brief and make it laugh-out-loud funny was second to none!

A consummate professional, Mike always responded to challenging briefs and tricky feedback with aplomb. For every problem that arose, he would come back to us with inspired solutions that we hadn’t even considered. One of my favourite examples of this was this illustration of the space capsule for Museum Mystery Squad and the Case from Outer Space.

We knew the first version wasn’t quite right, but we weren’t entirely sure what the solution was. We knew we needed to rotate the whole scene while still being able to see the character’s comical facial expressions, and we were struggling to visualise how this would work.

We asked Mike to redraft and were entirely unprepared for the spectacularly detailed illustration that came back. Mike had changed the perspective on the whole piece (with very little guidance from us) and addressed all of our misgivings. It is hands down my favourite illustration from this book.

But for all his obvious talent, Mike was incredibly modest, and was never quite sure how to respond to the lavish (and well-deserved) praise we heaped upon him on completion of every project. We are so proud to be publishing his brilliant last book, The Great Scotland Search, which is now available everywhere books are sold.

Our thoughts are with Mike’s family and friends, and we will be forever grateful for the joy he brought not only to those of us who worked with him, but also to the numerous children who get to giggle along with him for many years to come.

Richard Wainman
Senior Designer, Floris Books