Mike Wilks (author)
Encyclopedia
The Ultimate Alphabet
The Ultimate Alphabet is a best-selling book by Mike Wilks. It is a collection of 26 paintings, each depicting a collection of objects starting with a particular letter of the alphabet. It was published in 1986 as a competition with a £10 000 prize, closing in 1988...
(Pavilion Books, 1987), which was a New York Times bestseller and Sunday Times bestseller for 57 weeks with over 750 000 copies sold worldwide.
Mike Wilks won a scholarship to art school at the age of thirteen. After running his own successful design consultancy for several years, he devoted his time to painting and writing. In 1990, Mike Wilks was the subject of an award-winning documentary on BBC television. His original paintings and drawings, which have a surreal and dreamlike quality with an unsettling undertone, have been acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, as well as many private collections.
His first novel, Mirrorscape, is a fantasy adventure set in the land of Nem, a parallel world where the bizarre is commonplace and everyday logic is in abeyance. Two more Mirrorscape books have since been published. The three form the Mirrorscape Trilogy. The second book focuses on Mel, Wren and Ludo (the main characters) and their journey back into the Mirrorscape to save Nem once more- this time they face far greater troubles. The third book, published in late 2009, is the last in the trilogy, and is about the same three, but facing worse troubles than ever before.
About Mike Wilks
- Mike Wilks: Making His Mark. BBC TV Film (1990. Director: Dick Foster, 30 minutes duration).
- Mike Wilks: Paintings, Drawings, Illustrations 1977–1997 (published 1997) by Michael Heseltine with an introduction by Sir Tim Rice.