Denys Watkins-Pitchford

Denys James Watkins-Pitchford MBE (25 July 1905 – 8 September 1990) was an English naturalist, artist and author under the pen name 'BB'. He won the 1942 Carnegie Medal for The Little Grey Men. While at the Northampton School of Art, Watkins-Pitchford won a travelling scholarship to Paris. He was later to say that he could not remember how long he had spent in Paris, but Tom Quinn suggests that it was probably about three months. He worked at a studio in Montparnasse, and attended drawing classes. It is unknown exactly where he studied. In the autumn of 1924, he entered the Royal College of Art in London.

In 1930 he became an assistant art master at Rugby School where he remained for seventeen years. While at Rugby School he began contributing to the Shooting Times and started his careers as an author and an illustrator. He wrote under the pen name of 'BB', a name based on the size of lead shot he used to shoot geese, but he maintained the use of his real name as that of the illustrator in all his books. He illustrated books by other writers, mostly using scraperboard, and sold his own paintings locally.

By the late 1980s, Watkins-Pitchford needed regular dialysis treatment. He collapsed suddenly in September 1990 and died while under anaesthetic in the operating theatre of an Oxford hospital.

(1922) Diary & Sketchbook (Published in 2012) (1937) The Sportsman's Bedside Book (1938) Wild Lone: The Story of a Pytchley Fox (1939) Manka, the Sky Gypsy: The Story of a Wild Goose (1941) The Countryman's Bedside Book (1942) The Little Grey Men (1943) The Idle Countryman (1944) Narrow Boat (by L. T. C. Rolt, illustrated by Watkins-Pitchford) (1944) Brendon Chase (1945) The Fisherman's Bedside Book (1945) The Wayfaring Tree (1948) Meeting Hill (1948) The Shooting Man's Bedside Book (1948) A Stream in Your Garden (1948) Down the Bright Stream (sequel to The Little Grey Men (1942), later released as The Little Grey Men Go Down the Bright Stream) (1949) Be Quiet and Go A-Angling (Pseudonym Michael Traherne) (1950) Confessions of a Carp Fisher (1950) Letters from Compton Deverell (1950) Tide's Ending (1952) The Wind in the Wood (1953) Dark Estuary (1955) The Forest of Boland Light Railway (1957) Alexander (1957) Ben the Bullfinch (1957) Wandering Wind (1957) Monty Woodpig's Caravan (1958) Monty Woodpig & his Bubblebuzz Car (1958) Mr Bumstead (1958) A Carp Water (Wood Pool): And How to Fish It (1959) The Wizard of Boland (1959) Bill Badger's Winter Cruise (1959) Autumn Road to the Isles (1960) Bill Badger and the Pirates (1961) Bill Badger and the Secret Weapon (1961) The White Road Westwards (1961) The Badgers of Bearshanks (1961) Bill Badger's Finest Hour (1962) Bill Badger's Whispering Reeds Adventure (1962) September Road to Caithness (1962) Lepus the Brown Hare (1963) Bill Badger's Big Mistake (1964) The Pegasus Book of the Countryside (1964) Summer Road to Wales (1967) Bill Badger and the Big Store Robbery (1967) A Summer on the Nene (1967) The Whopper (1968) At the Back o' Ben Dee (1969) Bill Badger's Voyage to the Worlds End (1971) The Tiger Tray (1975) The Pool of the Black Witch (1975) Lord of the Forest (1976) Recollections of a Longshore Gunner (1978) A Child Alone (1979) Ramblings of a Sportsman-Naturalist (1980) The Naturalist's Bedside Book (1981) The Quiet Fields (1984) Indian Summer (1985) The Best of BB (1987) Fisherman's Folly (1990) The Confessions of a Coastal Gunner (published in 2011)