Neil Gaiman is dressed like an anthropomorphic badger: face paint, hair, the works. It’s not often that adults get to play dress-up (outside of, say, Comic-Con or fantasy movie premieres), but photographer Cambridge Jones gave 26 authors, Gaiman included, the opportunity to do just that. For an exhibit called 26 Characters at The Story Museum in Oxford, England, Jones asked the writers to dress up like their favorite childhood characters, to ensure the photos would be vibrant and captivating enough that people would actually stop and take a long look at them.
“Just taking a bunch of [photos of] authors isn’t going to make people interested — and authors aren’t necessarily outgoing people,” Jones told BBC News, where we first spotted the photos. “So I thought what if we gave them permission to have fun by asking them who their favourite character from childhood was and let their imagination run free.”
Click through to see Anthony Horowitz as both Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Malorie Blackman as the Wicked Witch of the West, and, of course, Neil Gaiman as Badger from The Wind in the Willows.
Photo Credit: Cambridge Jones
Neil Gaiman as Badger from Wind in The Willows
Photo Credit: Cambridge Jones
Cambridge Jones dressed as fictional pilot and adventurer Biggles
Photo Credit: Cambridge Jones
Philip Pullman as Long John Silver from Treasure Island
Photo Credit: Cambridge Jones
Francesca Simon and Stephen Butler as The Queen of Hearts and The Mad Hatter from Alice in Wonderland
Photo Credit: Cambridge Jones
Anthony Horowitz as Jekyll and Hyde
Photo Credit: Cambridge Jones
Benjamin Zephaniah as Anansi the Spider
Photo Credit: Cambridge Jones
Malorie Blackman as the Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz
Photo Credit: Cambridge Jones
Michael Morpurgo as Magwitch from Great Expectations
Photo Credit: Cambridge Jones
Terry Jones as Rupert the Bear
Photo Credit: Cambridge Jones
Terry Pratchett as Just William
Photo Credit: Cambridge Jones
Holly Smale as the White Witch from The Chronicles of Narnia