When I visit Angela Harding’s modest HQ in Oakham in Rutland in early December, one of her now six-strong team is heading out to the post office, loaded down with outgoing mail order parcels of Harding merchandise. “The sleigh is very full today,” she calls cheerily as she leaves. Meanwhile, Harding and I sit down to chat over tea and biscuits in her showroom, next to shelves displaying her instantly recognisable prints on cushions, jigsaws, bags, tea towels and more. And on the walls, some framed versions. My eyes are particularly drawn to a magnificent red deer print, created while Harding was artist-in-residence on the Knepp Estate in Sussex.

One result of that residency was “Wilding”, richly illustrated by Harding and written by author and doyenne of Knepp, Isabella Tree, and one of three books published in 2024 that Harding wrote and/or illustrated. The others were “Blossomise”, a new collection of nature-themed poems by Simon Armitage, and Harding’s own book, “Still Waters & Wild Waves”. “That was my most personal book to date. I think it most reflects how I live,” she tells me. As she explains in “Still Waters”, Harding and her husband spend extended periods away from home, sailing eastern coastal waters on their boat, Windsong. In late spring and early summer 2024, she also spent several weeks living and working on Fair Isle in Scotland.

Harding’s yearning to be close to nature has always been at the heart of her work. Now 64, she was born in Stoke-on-Trent, the middle one of three daughters, all of whom went to art school. It was a craft-orientated household – her mother worked as a stone carver in churches for a time while her teacher father influenced the young Angela’s taste for poetry and literature. From the time she was a small girl, Harding was “bird-obsessed”. “While other kids had posters of pop stars on their bedroom walls, I had Birds of the World. My first job when I was 11 was working at Alton Towers, leading the donkeys up and down for rides. The very first thing I bought with my wages was a pair of binoculars.”

Later while studying art, and specialising in printmaking at what was then Leicester Polytechnic, she eschewed student life in the city in favour of digs in the Leicestershire countryside, cycling in each day and often bringing home roadkill, or even the dead crows and jays that hung from gamekeepers’ gibbets to practise drawing animal anatomy. “Now my work is more emotionally than anatomically based but I still feel that understanding underneath what I do.”

Harding’s creative career was put on hold for a time after she had her two children but she did some work for an arts consultancy which involved commissioning other artists. “That taught me a lot about the business of being an artist. It was probably as important a training as art college,” she reflects. Once her children were older, Harding began to get her foot back in the door with gallery work, designs for greetings cards and then regular illustration commissions for magazines including Gardens Illustrated, BBC Countryfile and Country Living. Her first book commission came in 2016 when Faber asked her to create a cover design for the John Keats volume in its Nature Poets series.

Since then she has created covers for books by authors including PD James, James Rebanks, and Katya Balen’s Yoto Carnegie winning- novel, “October, October”. “My book covers always have to feel connected to something I’ve experienced,” she says. For example, the huge barn owl that features in that powerful illustration was inspired by walking through a wood and encountering an owl “that almost knocked her over”. Now she is also enjoying the writing that goes in tandem with creating her own books. “For a long time, because I didn’t do particularly well at school (Harding is dyslexic) I always felt that writing was for the higher echelons of society and not for me.”

Though she has been making prints for more than 40 years, Harding’s huge popularity has largely built within the past decade, and alongside such boosting factors as the lockdown jigsaw boom, books have played an integral part. She enjoys the democracy of book work as well as its collaborative nature. “The gallery world is fantastic aimed at a particular stratum of society. Whereas anybody can walk in into a bookshop. My only qualm with books is: why is the illustrator’s name so often printed only in tiny point size?”

Before I leave Rutland, Harding generously invites me to visit her home studio in the garden of her village house a few miles away. It’s a simple shed space with glorious views over rolling countryside. As the winter sun begins to sink in the sky, casting shades reminiscent of those from the silk screens she uses to colour her prints, Harding shows me some of the intricate vinyl and lino cuts that are the source of her beloved artworks. Created with simple chisel tools and a minimum of equipment, they demonstrate the wonderfully tactile nature of the printmaker’s craft which underpins the dynamic and sensuous appeal of the finished artworks.

During 2025, Harding has released a series of four small hardbacks. First, “Spring Unfurled” came out in February, followed by “Summer’s Hum”, “Falling Into Autumn” and “Winter’s Song”. Each 80-page title takes readers on a seasonal journey across Harding’s favourite UK landscapes: among them the Scottish wilderness, the Suffolk marshlands, the hills of Yorkshire, and the views from Harding’s own home studio. Each will feature prints taken from her three previous books. Says Harding; “I like the small gift format and the price point (£12.99), which makes them more affordable than my previous books.”

Otherwise, 2025 has been a year off publishing deadlines for Harding. But her legions of fans will be pleased to hear that creative work has been continuing, including during another summer residency in Fair Isle. “I’m a woman of a certain age, so it’s good to stay visible,” Harding says with typical modesty.

Interview by Caroline Sanderson first published in The Bookseller in 2024.