[1][2] Phillida Gili is the daughter of Reynolds Stone and Janet Woods.
[4][5][3] Gili won a prize from The Young Elizabethan magazine as a child for drawing a human foot from the perspective of an ant.
She studied at the St Martin's School of Art, telling UK daily newspaper The Guardian in March 2015 that Fritz Wegner, a visiting lecturer at St Martin's, "gave me the first words of encouragement I ever received at art school".
Some of her works are Sir John Betjeman's Archie and the Strict Baptists, The Nutcracker, Sleeping Beauty, picture books by Nina Bawden and Jenny Nimmo, a pop-up version of Cinderella, and The Lost Ears.
[8][9][10][11] She has also illustrated "for calendars, cards and stationery by Laura Ashley, [for] the National Trust, and for advertising".