It soon became apparent to us that DANNY had to be published in complete volumes or not at all, and I then set about designing the first cover for the thousand-page Volume One. I have illustrated over fifty book covers during a twenty-five-year career in 'commercial art', but DANNY was easily the most difficult cover I ever took on.

It's recorded in an old diary that over twenty versions of the cover were rejected and most of these are now lost, but we discovered a folder of rather ropey prints of the best ones, which you can see below.

While Chancery was engaged in writing all four volumes of DANNY she kept an ever-growing scrapbook of images that 'said' the book for her, so I was able to use these as source material, and I spent many, many patient hours on the telephone to very snooty London model agencies trying to track down models and photographers to get rights clearance.

It eventually became apparent that all the images were lacking bite, and I took Chancery's particular favourite, an old advert for Joop fashion which was an image based on Franz Von Stuck's The Sphinx which, ironically, was also in Chancery's "ideas folder" because she felt it typified Danny's ability to captivate and ensnare. I put the picture into Photoshop and generally roughed it up and added grain, scratches, new eyes and overlaid a scan of an old porn pic that, I think I'm right in saying, Chancery found in a litter bin in Manchester. I laid a printout of the design on Chancery's desk, expecting it to come back covered in red marker, but instead I was treated to the rare sight of a delighted Miss Stone saying that it was "perfect!".

The rest is history.

ART TRIVIA: The blistered paint in the bottom left-hand corner of the cover comes from a photograph of an old tractor, which I felt was strangely appropriate for DANNY