His mother is the children's author and illustrator Shirley Hughes and his grandfather the Liverpool store owner Thomas Hughes.
They had three children together, including the journalist Ed Vulliamy and a daughter who is another children's book illustrator, Clara Vulliamy.
In the summer of 1992, in response to media interest roused by rumours about atrocities being committed by Bosnian Serb forces in ad hoc prison camps, the Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžić invited journalists including Roy Gutman, a British film crew from ITN, and the Guardian’s Ed Vulliamy to visit the camps.