ART & LIFE

POSTCARD BIOGRAPHIES FROM THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY; Quentin Blake on Lewis Carroll (1832-1898)

After the success of the first series of postcard biographies taken from the NPG's archives, this is a new series of specially commissioned 70-word biographies of and by major figures of today

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson was a celibate cleric and mathematics don of Christ Church, Oxford. As Lewis Carroll he wrote, in his thirties, two books about Alice (initially to entertain a real Alice). They were amongst the first books to address children without didactic intent; and their sense of the absurd - precise, dream-like, subversive - has continued throughout the twentieth century to speak to poets, dramatists, Freudians, surrealists and, of course, children.

Quentin Blake c Reserved. Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) by an unknown photographer c NPG. The National Portrait Gallery has produced a pack of 25 pull-out postcards to accompany this series. Now on sale (pounds 5) in the NPG shop, or by mail order (0171 306 0055, x280 / fax 0171 306 0092). Add pounds 1 p&p for up to two packs, pounds 1.50 thereafter.