Born in 1932, Peter Blake studied at the Royal College of Art (1953-56), where his contemporaries included Frank Auerbach and Bridget Riley. He subsequently taught at the Royal College from 1964 to 1976, and has also taught at St Martin's School of Art.
During the 1960s Blake became one of the foremost British pop artists, famous above all for his 1967 album cover for the Beatles' Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. His paintings, which frequently used collage, included imagery from music halls and advertisements, and often had a nostalgic element. Apart from collage, he has produced sculpture, engraving, prints and, of course, album covers.
In the early 1970s Blake used watercolour to illustrate Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass, and in 1975 was a founder of the Brotherhood of Ruralists. He was made a Royal Academician in 1981. He had a major retrospective exhibition at the Tate Gallery, London, in 1983 and at the Tate Liverpool in 2007.