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 remainder of his books himself. In 1938, he drew his own pictures for "Swallows and Amazons" and "Swallowdale" to replace Webb's. Ransome's pictures were done in pen and ink with no colour, although colours have been added by some publishers in later editions. Typically, figures in the pictures are shown from the back, though there are some which show the faces of a few of the characters. Taqui Altounyan, the oldest of the children to whom the first edition of "Swallows and Amazons" was dedicated, recalls that "He shirked drawing faces and got over that difficulty with back views of