Norman Thelwell
Norman Thelwell is most famous for his humorous cartoons of little girls and their ponies. This however only scratches the surface of his life long passion for cartoons. He has had more that 30 cartoon books published on everything from Sailing to Dogs.
Thelwell was born in Birkenhead on May 3rd 1923, one of two sons of his parents Christopher and Emily Thelwell. The family lived in a terraced house which his mother kept spotless, Thelwell recalled that his mother thought "anyone who didn't move the wardrobes once a week was a bit suspect" When the young Thelwell could afford it he would always take the penny bus rides out to the country.
Thelwell could not remember ever being without his sketch book, even though his school, Rock Ferry High School, did not have an art room. His earliest surviving drawing is a pencil self-portrait done at the age of 10, on which his teacher had written in red ink: "V. good indeed". He left school aged 16 to become a junior clerk in an office. The second world war had already started by this time and he joined the army aged 18 in 1941, where he happily carried the extra weight of his sketch pad and paints.