Angela Harding

Angela Harding is an English wildlife printmaker and illustrator. She has illustrated her own books and those of other authors, and has made many book covers.

Early life and education

Angela Harding was born in 1960, in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire. She was educated in printmaking and painting at Leicester Polytechnic. She then took a master's degree in fine art at Nottingham Trent University.^[1]

Career

She works from her home as an English wildlife printmaker and illustrator. She makes sketches in the field, developing these into print designs in her studio.^[2] Her work frequently combines drawings of places in Britain that she has visited with motifs of birds or animals.^[3] She states that she feels connected to the sea, whether sailing in East Anglia, walking the coast in Cornwall, or cycling in Fair Isle and Shetland.^[4]

She has made prints from 1982 onwards in a variety of media including etching and drypoint. More recently she has moved mainly to linocut or vinyl cut and silkscreen printing.^[5]

Major works

Harding's books include the 2021 A Year Unfolding: A Printmaker’s View; the 2022 Wild Light; and the 2024 Still Waters & Wild Waves.^[6]

In 2025 she published a series of four seasonal books, which include prints previously published elsewhere: Spring Unfurled, Summer's Hum, Falling Into Autumn and Winter's Song.^[7]

She has illustrated other authors' books, including a 2024 version of the conservationist Isabella Tree's Wilding and the poet laureate Simon Armitage's 2024 Blossomise.^[6]

Harding has made book cover illustrations for many books,^[8] including Raynor Winn's 2018 nature memoir The Salt Path^[6] and the shepherd James Rebanks' 2020 English Pastoral.^[4]

Her prints include Blossomise, Fair Isle Curlews and the South Lighthouse, Fair Isle Puffins at the North Lighthouse, and Swans.^[5]

Awards

Isabella Tree's Wilding: How to Bring Wildlife Back, The Illustrated Guide for Children, illustrated by Harding, was the Children's Non-fiction Book of the Year in the 20215 British Book Awards.^[9]

Two titles illustrated by Harding have been shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize for Children's Writing on Nature and Conservation: Melissa Harrison's By Rowan and Yew for the 2022 award^[10] and Wilding for the 2024 award.^[11]

Personal life

Harding is married and lives in Wing, a village in Rutland.^[2] On 2 August 2025, she featured on BBC Radio 4's This Natural Life, interviewed on Fair Isle by Martha Kearney.^[12]