Oliver Postgate

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Biographical Information

Oliver Postgate (died in 2008) "was the creator of well-loved children's television programmes of the 1960s and 1970s such as Ivor the Engine, The Clangers, Noggin the Nog and Bagpuss... Oliver Postgate was born in Hendon, north London, on April 12 1925. His father, Raymond, was a political journalist and later the founder of The Good Food Guide, while his mother was the daughter of George Lansbury, the leader of the Labour Party in the 1930s and a cabinet minister. Oliver's cousins included Angela Lansbury, the actress.

"Both his parents were socialists, and the young Oliver spent many of his weekends at Bradfields, the Essex home of Francis Meynell. Other guests included HG Wells and Bertrand Russell, on whom Postgate later modelled the know-all wooden woodpecker Professor Yaffle for Bagpuss. After attending a series of schools, Oliver was finally sent for safety during the war to Dartington Hall, the progressive school in Devon, where he discovered his interest in art... He published an autobiography, Seeing Things, in 2000... Oliver Postgate married, in 1957, Prue Myers. She brought him three stepchildren and they had three sons together. She died in 1982, and he is survived by his partner, Naomi Linnell."