Clifford Webb Bernard Meninsky and then from 1923 to 1926 he was a part-time lecturer at Central School of Art in Birmingham. Webb produced illustrations for the first two books of the Swallows and Amazons series by Arthur Ransome, which were used in some 1930s editions. Because Ransome did not like those produced by Steven Spurrier for the first book, "Swallows and Amazons", those were not used in its first edition (1930), apart from the endpaper map and dust jacket. In 1931 the second edition contained Webb's illustrations, as did the first edition of the sequel, "Swallowdale". (Ransome himself was the original
Swallows and Amazons series shaggy heads of hair or hats". The sixth book in the series, "Pigeon Post", won the inaugural Carnegie Medal from the Library Association in June 1937, recognising the best 1936 children's book by a British subject. It was reviewed in "The New York Times" the month after J. B. Lippincott & Co. of Philadelphia published the first U.S. edition. Ellen Lewis Buell welcomed the latest work in the six-year-old series that had firmly established "a special niche in juvenile literature". She noted the children's "vivid collective imagination which turned play into serious business" (hunting a gold mine on the moors)