Harry Harrison: a life of sketchy behaviour

Sybil hisses out of the page, green and yellow coils tucked neatly beneath her. The imperious reptile is a creation of British illustrator Harry Harrison for his latest collaboration with children's writer Sarah Brennan.

"I wanted to make her slinky, sexy and also knowing," 51-year-old Harrison says of the titular character in the tale to mark the coming Year of the Snake.

Harrison, who has lived in Hong Kong for 19 years, is perhaps better known for the satirical cartoons that he creates six times a week for the opinion pages. But he also does many illustrations for other publications and is a long-time collaborator with Brennan on children's books, including a series on Chinese zodiac animals, featuring among others Oswald Ox, Rhonda Rabbit and Temujin the Tiger.

He has drawn Temujin as a more brutish character: "It was all about his strength, but later he meets his comeuppance," he says.

Run Run Rat, however, is a more likeable-looking rodent who goes travelling and ends up in Beijing for the Olympics. A scrawny fellow dressed in Chinese-style jacket, Run Run is starving, so "he chases this guy who has a hanging out of his pocket and chasing that down he wins a medal!"

Sybil Snake is based on Wu Zetian, China's only female emperor. "She was one of China's serial killers by all accounts," he says. "She killed the original empress when she was a courtesan. It is thought she killed at least one of her children and husband. She killed her child because he was coming of age and would have been a threat."