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.
Oliver Postgate is widely regarded as the greatest children's storyteller of the modern era. His work, which included The Clangers, Ivor the Engine, The Pogles, Noggin the Nog and, most famously, Bagpuss, is beloved by generations. In this delicious memoir 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. 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 exquisitely told.
'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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