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Oliver Postgate (born 1925 in Hendon, Middlesex, England, died 2008) was an English animator, puppeteer and writer.

He is the creator and writer of some of the most popular children's television programmes ever seen in Britain. Pingwings, Pogles' Wood, Noggin the Nog, Ivor the Engine, The Clangers and Bagpuss, were all made by Smallfilms, the company he set up with Peter Firmin, and were shown on the BBC between the 1950s and the 1980s, and on ITV from 1959 to the present day. In a 1999 poll, Bagpuss was voted most popular children's programme of all time.

Life

His father was Raymond Postgate and his mother Daisy Lansbury, making him the cousin of actress Angela Lansbury and grandson of Labour politician, George Lansbury; some of whose principles he inherited, to the extent that he was prepared to go to prison as a conscientious objector during World War II, as his father had done in 1916. His other grandfather was the Latin classicist John Percival Postgate.

In his early years he did a number of different jobs, never really finding his niche until he entered into a collaboration with Firmin, who built most of the models used in the various animations. Setting up their business in a disused cowshed near Canterbury, Kent, Postgate and Firmin worked on children's programmes based on concepts and scripts which mostly originated with Postgate. He was also the narrator for all the Smallfilms productions, as well as many minor productions including the WereBear story tapes, and his distinctive voice became familiar to generations of children.

Postgate married Prudence Myers in 1957, becoming stepfather to her three children (Kevan, Kerris and Krispian). The couple had twins in 1959 (Stephen and Simon); and another son in 1964 (Daniel). Prudence died in 1982.

In the 1970s and 1980s Postgate was active in the Anti-nuclear campaign, addressing meetings and writing several pamphlets including The Writing on the Sky.

In 1986, in collaboration with the historian Naomi Linnell, Postgate painted a 50ft long Illumination of the Life and Death of Thomas Becket for a book of the same name. This is now in the archive of the Canterbury Museum. In 1990 he painted a similar work on Christopher Columbus for a book entitled The Triumphant Failure. His voice was heard once more in 2003, as narrator for Alchemists of Sound, a television documentary about the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. On 15 July 2007, he was guest on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs.

In his later years, he blogged for the New Statesman. ^[1]

The University of Kent at Canterbury awarded Postgate an honorary degree in 1987 and A Canterbury Chronicle, a triptych by Postgate commissioned in 1990 hangs in the Great Hall of Eliot College on the University's Canterbury campus.^[2]

His autobiography, Seeing Things, was published in 2000. He died peacefully in Broadstairs on the Kent coast on 8 December 2008^[3].

Publications

• Seeing Things: An Autobiography, Oliver Postgate; illustrated by Peter Firmin, 2000 - ISBN 0-330-39000-7
• The Writing on the Sky, Oliver Postgate 1982 - ISBN 0-903400-89-8
• BECKET, Oliver Postgate & Naomi Linnell 1989 - ISBN 0-86272-405-8
• Columbus, The Triumphant Failure, Oliver Postgate & Naomi Linnell 1991 ISBN 0-86272-738-3

References

External links

• Oliver Postgate's personal web pages
• The Smallfilms Treasury
• A Canterbury Chronicle
• The Dragons' Friendly Society