Foreman's first book is an anti-war story about a powerful military leader who finally sees the light. He ends up in a field, quietly smelling the flowers. The illustrations reflect his graphic wit and his gift for political satire and the 'lit from within' quality that illuminates so many of his books Photograph: Templar Publishing
When drought leaves his country barren, and all the birds fly off in search of peas, the Lion King sets off to ask the Fat King for help. Here, he and his page travel through the Mountains of Plenty, where they are dwarfed by piles of cakes in an image typical of Foreman's witty approach to environmental issues. Photograph: Puffin Books
A man becomes so obsessed with reaching a faraway star that he destroys all the forests to fuel a rocket that can reach it. When he is gone, dinosaurs come out of hibernation and set about cleaning up the planet in a fable that is even more relevant today than when it was written. Photograph: Puffin Books
An absorbing, perfectly pitched child's eye view of the second world war, with line drawings, watercolours and diagrams of bombers, barrage balloons and doodlebugs. Here a bombed church trembles against the operatic incandescence of a fiery watercolour sky. Photograph: Pavilion Books
In perhaps his finest book, young soldiers play football one Christmas during the first world war. The innocent lightness of their game is mirrored in this picture when they are blown off the ground by an exploding shell. The figure drawing has a subtle authority and under the atmospheric watercolour washes, the honesty of the pencil line adds to the impact. Football is a recurring motif in his work. Photograph: Pavilion Books
Because Foreman grew up in a house without books, he's able to approach the classics with a fresh eye. The first of Foreman's many collaborations with Michael Morpurgo was about King Arthur. His stirring full-on illustrations conjure the excitement of pounding hooves, flashing steel, magic and romance .
Photograph: Pavilion Books
Foreman uses a lot of blue in his illustrations, and in this battle scene the flashes of orange capture the clash of sword on shield as, in the foreground, a knight is felled by a jauntily striped spear. Photograph: Pavilion Books
A Chelsea pensioner whose football career was ended by the war looks from his glory days on the pitch to his darkest memories as an army ambulance driver when he's confronted with the horror of Belsen. This compassionate, starkly unsentimental drawing of a dead child inspired Michel Morpurgo to write The Mozart Question. Photograph: Pavilion Books
When Foreman was three an incendiary bomb smashed through his bedroom ceiling, narrowly missing him, and exploding up the chimney. Here he uses watercolour to capture the explosive impact as Billy's army ambulance drives over a landmine. Photograph: Pavilion Books
Foreman returned to the Holocaust in this collaboration with Michael Morpurgo, though this time it's seen through the prism of music. Here, a camp orchestra plays for concentration camp inmates, their Stars of David glinting on their chests. The dark drawings are almost unbearably painful – “but children do need to see these things”, says Forman.
Illustration: Walker Books Photograph: Walker Books
Foreman lives in Cornwall, where the light is a constant source of inspiration. His illustrations, whether of land or sea, have a luminosity that rises from the page, as in this redemptive tale of a rebellious teenage lawbreaker in the 1950s. It's a finely produced book and the quality of the full-bleed printing is such that you feel you are looking at original sketchbook watercolours. Photograph: Templar Publishing
