LoveReading Says
LoveReading Says
No doubt fans of the Postgate and Firmin children’s characters will seek this autobiography out but I’d like to urge everyone to read this wonderfully idiosyncratic and meandering story of a life not lived by the rules. As one might expect from someone in Oliver Postgate’s line of work, the visual imagery is very strong leading to delightful descriptions and vivid scene painting. Following his father’s death in 2009, son Daniel provides an afterword paying tribute to his eccentric, inventive, complex and inspired father. He writes from his father’s work shed where Bagpuss still sits on a shelf overseeing events with benign solicitude.
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Seeing Things Synopsis
Oliver Postgate's death in December 2008 was greeted with great sadness. For over forty years his name was synonymous with the best in children's television - Bagpuss, The Clangers, Ivor the Engine, The Pogles, Noggin the Nog, Pingwings. Oliver wrote and narrated the stories, while Peter Firmin illustrated the characters and made the puppets. Their classic films are still loved by viewers of all ages. In this delicious autobiography Oliver Postgate describes how he came to create his stories and characters, developing innovative techniques of animation and puppetry alongside his friend and co-producer Peter Firmin. Amazingly, almost all of Oliver's films were made in a cowshed in Kent on a budget of next to nothing. But the path to film-making was far from conventional, or even planned. Oliver Postgate was the grandson of George Lansbury, leader of the Labour Party in the 1920s, and his father was Raymond Postgate, who became famous as the founder and author of The Good Food Guide. Oliver followed in neither's footsteps. Before his first TV production, Alexander the Mouse in 1958, he had already been a war evacuee; a conscientious objector; a farm labourer; a relief worker in post-war Germany; an artist; an actor; and an inventor. The story of Oliver Postgate's extraordinary and adventurous life, and the wonderful characters who populated it, both real and imagined, is witty, charming, beautifully remembered and beautifully told.
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Press Reviews
Oliver Postgate Press Reviews
'Oliver Postgate was, for my money, the greatest children's storyteller of the last 100 years. Together, the team of Postgate and Peter Firmin were apparently incapable of creating anything less than timelessly wonderful whenever they sat down to work.'
Charlie Brooker
Author
About Oliver Postgate
Oliver Postgate was born in north London in 1925. He attended several different schools including, inadvertently, Dartington Hall. He attempted several different professions before founding Smallfilms with Peter Fermin in 1957. They went on to make a multitude of children’s films for television, from a cowshed near Canterbury. He died, aged 83, in Broadstairs, Kent, in December 2008.
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