Norman Thelwell

I love Thelwell's cartoons and I have quite a few of his books. 

Norman Thelwell was, for me, the quintessential British countryside cartoonist. He perfectly captured the England that I grew up in - not the flag-waving, angry, polarised, jingoistic 'we'll fight them on the beaches' England that we've become, but the peaceful, inclusive, pastoral England of village fetes and vegetable shows, weekend fishing, allotments and gardens, DIY dads and WI mums, local shops, eccentric hobbyists, and people dressing up to take part in curious festivals and ancient customs despite the fact that nobody really knows why they're doing it.

You'll probably know his work best from his 'Riding Academy' cartoons where Penelope and her small chums come to grips with handling big Hunters and chubby Shetlands. He also did many covers for the original run of James Herriot's 'Vet' series of books (that became the TV series All Creatures Great and Small) and painted the film posters for the movie versions.

Norman Thelwell was born in Birkenhead, Merseyside, in 1923. He spent World War II in the East Yorkshire Regiment, having signed up at the age of 18. Then, after being cashiered in 1944 , he took evening classes in art at Nottingham Art School. A fellow art student, Rhona, became his wife in 1949. After Nottingham, he took a degree at Liverpool College of Art and then, in 1950, he took up a post teaching design and illustration at Wolverhampton College of Art. 

He also became a contributor to the satirical magazine Punch, who first published his work in 1952, beginning a 25-year relationship that resulted in more than 1,500 cartoons, of which 60 were used as front covers. He also worked as political cartoonist for the News Chronicle from 1956 until the paper closed in 1960. He left teaching to work fully freelance in 1956.

Known to many only as 'Thelwell', he found his true comic niche with pony club girls and their ponies, a subject for which he became best-known. He created a cartoon strip about such a pair, Penelope and Kipper. His first collection of cartoons, Angels on Horseback, was published in 1957. He also illustrated Chicko in the British boys' comic Eagle. 

For the last quarter of a century of his life he lived in the Test Valley at Timsbury, near Romsey in Hampshire, gradually restoring a farm house and landscaping the grounds which gave rise in 1978 to his first factual book, A Plank Bridge by a Pool, which detailed the first two lakes he dug there. His creation of a third lake was later featured on the BBC’s South Today programme. Written much earlier, but published three years later, A Millstone Round My Neck described his experiences in re-building a Cornish water mill (Addicroft Mill at Liskeard, which he called 'Penruin'), that he sold before the book was published. He always loved old buildings, and in his autobiography, Wrestling with a Pencil, he wrote about his joy in the beauty of old cottages. He was a skilled illustrator and watercolourist and I learned a lot from copying him when I was a boy.

Norman Thelwell died in 2004 but his prints and cards seem to be as popular as ever, perhaps because they remind us of an England now mostly vanished. 

Nostalgia is a powerful thing. 

His aforementioned autobiography - Wrestling with a Pencil - is a lovely read and features a lot of his less comic work. I very much recommend it.

His website is here.