Oliver Postgate
Richard Oliver Postgate (12 April 1925 – 8 December 2008) was an English animator, puppeteer, and writer.[1] He was the creator and writer of some of Britain's most popular children's television programmes. Bagpuss, Pingwings, Noggin the Nog, Ivor the Engine, Clangers and Pogles' Wood, were all made by Smallfilms, the company he set up with collaborator, artist and puppet maker Peter Firmin. The programmes were originally broadcast by the BBC from the 1950s to the 1980s. In a 1999 BBC poll Bagpuss was voted the most popular children's television programme of all time.[2]
Oliver Postgate
8 December 2008 (aged 83)
Naomi Linnell (1985–2008)
3, including Daniel
Postgate family
Angela Lansbury cousin
Margaret Cole aunt
John Postgate brother
Early life[edit]
Postgate was born in Hendon, Middlesex, England, into the Postgate family, as the younger son of journalist and writer Raymond Postgate and his wife Daisy (née Lansbury), making him the cousin of actress Angela Lansbury and maternal grandson of Labour politician, and sometime leader, George Lansbury. His other grandfather was the Latin classicist John Percival Postgate. His brother was the microbiologist and writer John Postgate FRS. Another aunt was Margaret Cole, the socialist politician.[3]
Education[edit]
Postgate was educated at the private Woodstock School on Golders Green Road in Finchley in north-west London and Woodhouse Secondary School, formerly known from 1923 onwards as Woodhouse Grammar School, also in Finchley (and now renamed Woodhouse College), followed by Dartington Hall School, a progressive private boarding school in Devon.[4][5]
Personal life[edit]
Postgate married Prudence "Prue" Myers in 1957, becoming stepfather to her three children. The couple had twins in 1959 (Stephen and Simon), and another son in 1964 (Daniel Postgate). Prue died of cancer in 1982. Naomi Linnell was his partner for the last twenty-three years of his life.[18]
Postgate's autobiography, Seeing Things, was published in 2000, and after Oliver died in 2008 his son Daniel wrote an afterword which was added at the end of the book.
His grandfather was Labour Party leader (1932-1935) George Lansbury and he was cousin to English born American actress Angela Lansbury. He is distantly related to the Australian-born writer and academic Coral Lansbury, whose son Malcolm Turnbull became the 29th Prime Minister of Australia.
Death[edit]
Postgate died at a nursing home in Broadstairs, near his home on the Kent coast, on 8 December 2008, aged 83.[19]
After his death there was huge recognition of his influence and effect on British culture, and affection for the role his work had played in many people's lives.[20][21] His work was widely discussed in the UK media and many tributes were paid to him and his work across the internet. Charlie Brooker dedicated a portion of his Screenwipe show to Oliver Postgate, and the way he influenced Brooker's own childhood, in an episode that was broadcast the day after Postgate's death.[22]