Peter is here. Jane is here. For anyone approaching middle age, they never really went away.

Anyone who remembers learning to read about these two heroic and happy icons of innocent childhood may be surprised to find they did not simply skip into oblivion in the late Seventies.

The Ladybird books, featuring sentimental pastel paintings of Peter, Jane and pet dog Pat, may not dominate classrooms and homes as they did in their Sixties and Seventies heyday.

Yet the cheap, child-sized hardbacks still sell millions of copies across the world and have returned to British bookshelves to compete with aggressively modern equivalents.

Now nostalgia-lovers can see much of the original artwork on display at a gallery in Eastbourne.

Peter and Jane were the unlikely golden couple leading a reading revolution - the Key Words Reading Scheme, which celebrates its 40th anniversary this year.

The comforting cocoon they inhabited now seems an airbrushed world of politically incorrect, middle-class suburban convention.

The traditional gender roles which enraged feminist critics were encapsulated in book 4a, which reveals: "Peter has to help daddy work with the car. Jane has to help mummy work in the house."

Yet many may find it comforting to step back into the idealised Peter and Jane world.

After all, the duo care nothing for such modern moral horrors as teenage pregnancy, fit-inducing computer addiction or TV and junk food-fuelled child obesity.

Readers wouldn't find Peter swigging an alcopop or see Jane dolled up in anything more daring than her cosy cardigan, smart Sunday skirt and Alice band tucked into straight blonde hair.

While their lives may have been relentlessly uneventful, they did their job by introducing simple speech patterns and vocabulary - free of Ali G-style inflections or txt msg talk.

Peter and Jane went for bike rides or hand-in-hand walks across pastoral fields under beaming sunshine.

They rummaged in attics for their entertainment, delighting in the discovery of old radios, cricket bats or a top hat.

Ladybird launched its educational publishing catalogue in the Forties. The firm wanted the Peter and Jane books "to create a desirable attitude to learning".

The straightforward texts were based on the theory that 100 words account for half of our verbal usage, with 300 making up three-quarters.

Peter, Jane, mummy and daddy repeat phrases monotonously to ensure the message gets through.

But while the words were important in the schoolroom or nursery, it is the pictures that are in the spotlight now.

The Towner Art Gallery in Eastbourne is hosting Another Time, Another Place, an exhibition of 40 original Ladybird illustrations from the Sixties and Seventies.

The publishers used several professional artists to illustrate their books, which also included a People At Work series showing engineers, firemen, policemen and other uniformed professionals going about their carefree day-to-day business.

The exhibition showcases the work of John Berry and Martin Aitchison, who started working for Ladybird in the early Sixties.

The selection includes the classic Peter and Jane images of the boy helping daddy with the car while the girl helps mummy bake a cake.

Ladybird began to make concessions to the cultural diversity of Britain in the mid-Seventies, picturing black children for the first time in its Sun Start series.

Some Seventies incarnations of the golden couple even had them wearing jeans and trainers.

But Peter and Jane remained a long way from their modern-day Oxford University Press counterparts, Biff and Chipper - Biff being a tomboy-ish girl.

These two are reluctant to help mum and dad with household chores, preferring to have fun with their shell-suited gran, Asian friend Nadim and black friends Wilf and Wilma.

Yet Peter and Jane remain on display in many stores - real booksellers, not just charity shops. Each £1.99 hardback carries a red strip proclaiming: "Over 80 million copies sold".

It is not known how many of those are still being used to introduce today's children to the power of words and how many are mere nostalgic indulgences for Peter and Jane-loving adults.

Either way - Peter will be happy. Jane will be happy.

Another Time, Another Place runs at the Towner Art Gallery in High Street, Eastbourne, until May 30. For more details, call 01323 417961.