BESTALL, Alfred

"The thought of Rupert being in people's homes and in so many children's heads was a perpetual anxiety to me"

Born in Mandalay, Upper Burma, Alfred Edmeades Bestall spent the first four years of his life in East Asia before returning to Britain and entering Rydal School in North Wales at the age of twelve. By this time he was drawing obsessively and later recalled that "19 times out of 20 when I was in trouble it would be for drawing on my exercise books when I ought to have been doing something else!" In his later schooldays Bestall recalled becoming "tremendously enthused by the penwork that appeared in Punch... I sent up a drawing to them, but it came back with a note saying that the joke was altogether too feeble!"

In spite of this rejection Bestall resolved to be an artist, getting a scholarship to Birmingham Art School and after the war establishing himself as an artist of some versatility by doing illustrations for The Amalgamated Press, Punch, The Sketch and Tatler among others. With this platform he was chosen by the Daily Express to succeed Mary Tourtel and quickly found his stride. The year after his takeover, Stanley Marshall of the Express decided that there were enough adventures to collect into an annual, with The New Adventures Of Rupert published in autumn 1936. These have given Bestall's Rupert posterity, as well as, in their use of colour, establishing from the first annual his trademark red pullover and yellow check trousers.