EXTRACTS: illustrators issue 3 © 2013 The Book Palace (96 PAGES in Full edition)

70 I n 1955, the cartoonist Peter Maddocks, created a new style of daily strip cartoon entitled Four D. Jones. It was published in the Daily Express newspaper, and featured the eponymous Jones, whowas the incompetent sheriff of Buzzards Creek in America. He had a time- hoop, and when he stepped through it, he entered the fourthdimension, and could go backwards and forwards in time: it was time travel long before Doctor Who. He got involved in amazing adventures; there was danger, chaos, humour, pathos, and fantastic drawings. It was a cult strip, and required daily reading for those of us who worked in advertising and publishing, and a good many others besides! The strip remains one of the very few successful indigenous British comic strips. Peter told me, “I drew about fourteen sample strips, complete with dialogue, and managed to get an interview with Bryn Havord looks at the life and times of one of Fleet Street’s most successful and prolific cartoonists Peter Maddocks Arthur Christiansen, the legendary editor of the Daily Express, playing Jeff Jefferson, the newspaper editor, in the film The Day The Earth Caught Fire. Arthur Christiansen, the legendary editor of the Daily Express. He asked me to show him a synopsis of further story lines. I didn’t have any, and said I’d make it up as I went along. I told him of some of the ideas I had, and remarkably, he said ‘OK, you can start daily from next Monday. I’ll give you ten weeks to show me what you can do’. The strip lasted for ten years!” Peter went on, “However, it wasn’t all plain sailing. After it had been running for a couple of years, Arthur Christiansen, while on holiday in the south of France with his proprietor Lord Beaverbrook, had a heart attack, and Edward Pickering replaced him as editor. He took an instant dislike to me and Four D. Jones, claiming that its content did not belong in a Conservative newspaper, and he stopped publishing the strip in mid story. “Days passed, and there was a noticeable increase in the