EXTRACTS: Illustrators Issue 5 © 2013 The Book Palace (96 PAGES in Full edition)

90 The Studio: Heros the Spartan What a fantastic opportunity for a teenage boy: Art editor Arthur Roberts gave me my first job in Fleet Street, as a lettering artist on the thinking childs’ comics Eagle, Girl, Swift and Robin . The wages didn’t matter much, I would get free copies of all Sir Edward Hulton’s publications; the comics for me every week, Picture Post for my father, the monthly Housewife magazine for my mother, Farmer’s Weekly for the gardener, and I’d get to meet all my heroes who did the illustrations. The staff were a pretty interesting bunch as well. My abiding memory of founding editor, the hard-drinking and chain-smoking Reverend Marcus Morris, was of white socks and suede shoes, and a daily trip by a messenger boy in a taxi to Hampstead, to collect important papers he’d forgotten to bring to the office. The most exotic woman I had ever seen was Jean Crouch, the editor of Girl, accompanied every day by two equally exotic dogs. Her deputy editor, John Trent, a colourful former Brighton College boy who, after achieving his ambition to live in California, met an early death in a car crash in Pasadena. In the general studio, Gerald Royston Lipman (Lip) the cartoonist, who went on to become cartoon editor of Express Newspapers, sat behind a pillar producing spot drawings every day for publication in each of the four comics, and there was Miss Tavener. I don’t think any of us ever got to know her first name: she resembled Miss Marple as portrayed by Joan Hickson, and kept us youngsters in order with icy resolve and withering looks. Marcus Morris, who became honorary chaplain of St Bride’s, the journalists’ church in Fleet Street, was concerned at the detrimental effects that imported American comics might have on British children. He and illustrator Frank Hampson assembled a team of artists and writers, and produced a dummy © Colin Frewin and Associates