In the mid-1980s, she began to both write and illustrate books, including her successful series about a mischievous bear named Wilberforce. She intensely disliked the razzamatazz of the publishing world and was utterly uninterested in its gossip. She was particularly happy to be taken up by Walker books in the last years of her life as she much admired their books. She was a versatile artist and excelled in both black and white line drawings, where she combined detailed backgrounds with cartoon-like simplification of the principal figures, and in coloured work.
