Thelwell ~ English cartoonist/ artist

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• published: 15 Nov 2013
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Norman Thelwell (3 May 1923 -- 7 February 2004) was an English cartoonist well known for his humorous illustrations of ponies and horses. Born in Birkenhead, he spent World War II in the East Yorkshire Regiment, having signed up in 1941, and was art editor of an army magazine in New Delhi, India. His first published cartoon, in the London Opinion, was an Indian subject. In 1944, he took evening classes in art at Nottingham Art School. A fellow art student, Rhona, became his wife in 1949. They had one son and one daughter. After Nottingham, he took a degree at Liverpool College of Art, then in 1950, he took up a post teaching design and illustration at Wolverhampton College of Art, but gave this up to work freelance in 1956. He became a contributor to the satirical magazine Punch, who first published his work in 1952, beginning a 25 year relationship which resulted in over 1,500 cartoons, of which 60 were used as front covers. His first collection of cartoons, Angels on Horseback, was published in 1957. Known to many only as Thelwell, he found his true comic niche with Pony Club girls and their comic ponies, a subject for which he became best-known, and which led to a cartoon strip about such a pair, Penelope and Kipper. 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, gradually restoring a farm house and landscaping the grounds which gave rise to his first factual book, A Plank Bridge by a Pool, which detailed the first two lakes he dug there. 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 was sold before the book was published. He always loved old buildings, and in his autobiography, 'Wrestling with a Pencil' wrote about his joy in the beauty of old cottages.