Peter Woolcock (1926 - 4 December 2014; Argentina & UK)
Peter Woolcock was a British comic artist who most notably drew funny animal comics for the nursery comic magazines Playhour and Jack & Jill from the 1950s until the 1980s. He was the fifth and final artist to continue Julius Stafford Baker II's series 'Tiger Tim'.

As for his own comic series he mostly drew series about frogs and toads, including 'The Funny Tales of Freddie Frog' (1954-1969) and 'Teddy Toad' (1956). Woolcock later settled on Bermuda, where he began a second career as a political cartoonist for the Bermuda Sun and The Royal Gazette.

Peter Woolcock was born in 1926 in Argentina into a British family. He grew up passing his school days by sketching farm animals. At age 15, he made a couple of striking satirical depictions of Adolf Hitler and at eighteen, he joined the British army's Royal Tank Regiment. He served in Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany and Denmark, while chronicling his experiences in his sketchbook. Despite an early desire to become a cartoonist, Woolcock first held a marketing job at the advertising department of Lever Brothers in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

In 1953, he worked his passage on a cargo boat to England. He went from job interview to interview and eventually arrived at the doors of the Amalgamated Press, where, he says, he was seen by the wrong man. Five months later he was persuaded to try them again and was immediately offered work by Leonard Matthews, who mostly typecast him as an animal artist for the company's nursery titles and children's books. Woolcock remained with the company after it was bought by the Mirror Group and renamed to Fleetway Publications in 1959.

A large portion of Woolcock's output dealt with amphibian characters, predominantly frogs and toads. His first creation for the company was Anthony Rowley, based on the frog from the British children's song 'A Frog He Would A-Wooing Go'. The title was however changed to The Funny Tales of Freddie Frog (1954-1969) by the time it began appearing in Jack & Jill in 1954.

Woolcock continued the feature until 1969, with an interlude in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when it was drawn by Antonio Lupatelli, Sergio Asteriti, Jim Turnbull and Gordon Hutchings. He also created a character called Teddy Toad for Playhour.

In 1955, he drew the hugely popular The Wind in the Willows for !which came to an end a year later. Woolcock revived the character of Mr. Toad in Harold Hare's Own Paper in 1959, and continued to draw that character for Harold Hare and Playhour for 25 years. (Woolcock had drawn an earlier, similar character called Toby Toad for Playhour.)

During a period of 25 years, he drew several features built around Mr. Toad from Kenneth Grahame's 1908 children's novel The Wind in the Willows. His first series with the character carried the title of the novel and appeared in Playhour in 1955. Mr. Toad later returned in the pages of Harold Hare's Own Paper in 1959 and in Playhour once again in 1964.

Other characters Woolcock drew for Playhour were 'Winnie the Pooh' (1955, a character originally created by A.A. Milne in 1926 and illustrated by E.H. Shepard), 'Mimi and Marmy' (1957) and Wally Weasel, Sammy Stoat and Harry Hamster from 'The Wonderful Tales of Willow Wood' (1957), often in alternation with Turnbull.

Woolcock was also the final artist to draw the adventures of Tiger Tim and the Bruin Boys. The long-running feature was created by Julius Stafford Baker II in 1904, and it had been continued by artists such as Herbert Foxwell, Bert Wymer and Julius Stafford Baker III in several of the AP's children's titles since then. Some sources state that Woolcock's involvement already began in the 1950s; other credit him for the stories published in Jack and Jill and its annuals from the 1960s until the strip's end in 1985.

Woolcock was kept incredibly busy for 38 years, his strips and illustrations appearing in Tiny Tots, Film Fun, Look and Learn, Treasure, Disneyland Magazine, Toby, Dickory Dock and Storyland. He retired from drawing strips in 1987.

His books published during the same period include Animal ABC (1980), One, Two, Three: A Book of Numbers by Leonard Matthews (1981), Big and Small: A Book of Opposites by Leonard Matthews (1981), Busy People: A Book of Work and Play by Leonard Matthews (1982), Busy Days: A Book of Time by Leonard Matthews (1982), ABC: A Book of Words (1982) and Rain or Shine: A Book of the Weather (1983).

Woolcock lived in England, Spain and, since 1981, in Bermuda, where by 1983 he had already begun on his second career and become one of the island's leading humour and political cartoonists. Not particularly a home-lover, Woolcock had lived in England and Spain before settling on the British isle of Bermuda in the Atlantic Ocean in 1981. Triggered by the events in the election year 1983, he submitted some of his funny drawings to the daily newspaper Bermuda Sun and was hired. He quickly established himself as one of the island's leading (and few) political cartoonists, especially after he transferred to the Royal Gazette in the early 1990s.

Some of his early work has been exhibited at the Bermudan National Gallery and many of his cartoons for the Royal Gazette have been collected in the annual Peter Woolcock's Woppened for many years, the 23rd collection appearing in 2011. He has also illustrated children's books, including The Turtle Who Ate a Balloon (2007) and The Adventures of Bermuda's Toad with One Eye (2008).

Woolcock's political caricatures and wry single-panel commentaries were loved by the small island's population, including the politicians he satirized. Especially former M.P. Alex Scott (2003-2006) was a great sport. The politician counted the number of times he was drawn by the cartoonist, and was proud to say he was caricatured the most. Woolcock confirmed this, and said he could draw the man by heart. In a 2013 interview, Peter Woolcock said he was satisfied with his role commenting on the conservative politics of Bermuda's gentler society, knowing he couldn't be as vicious as his colleagues from the mainland.