Alfred Bestall

Alfred Edmeades "Fred" Bestall, MBE (14 December 1892 – 15 January 1986) was a British writer and illustrator for Rupert Bear for the London Daily Express, from 1935 to 1965.

Biography Early life Bestall was born in Mandalay, Burma in 1892, where his parents were Methodist missionaries. He and his sister were sent back to England in 1897, and their parents joined them in 1910.

Professional career Following the war, Bestall finished his studies at the Central School of Art and was hired to illustrate books by Enid Blyton. He also began doing paintings for The Amalgamated Press and did illustrations for Punch and Tatler, as well as for over 50 books. In 1935, Bestall was selected to take over the Daily Express’s Rupert Bear stories from Mary Tourtel. Bestall did not sign his Rupert strips for the first 12 years out of respect to Tourtel. He was often asked where Rupert's home village of Nutwood was supposed to be located, and told his first biographer George Perry that 'it is an amalgam of the scenery in the Weald, the wooded plateau so loved by the poet Hilaire Belloc that lies in Kent and Sussex between the North and South Downs, and also of the Severn Valley around Hereford, with the more rugged terrain required in the stories reminiscent of the mountains of Snowdonia.'

The Daily Express Children's Editor had a single instruction for Bestall which was "no evil characters, fairies or magic".

During World War II he served as an air raid warden in Surbiton, Surrey. His 1941 oil painting of Air-Raid Post M4 on Surbiton Hill, under snow, was exhibited at the Royal Academy, 'one of his proudest achievements.' Despite the suburban setting on the fringe of London, the area was hit by enemy bombing during the Blitz, houses were destroyed and families were 'bombed out'. In 1947, three girls from the 10th Surbiton Guides visited Bestall at home, and begged to be included in a Rupert cartoon, which they were. Until 1937, he had a severe speech impediment, a 'persistent stutter' caused by a spinal injury at an early age in Burma, making him 'desperately shy and withdrawn.' His parents would never tell him the cause of the accident, which he was too young to remember, but he believed it might have been a fall from a pony. However, at the age of 45, 'I went to see a famous osteopath, who told me to sit down. He then went behind me, and gave me a fearful jerk, I felt something click, and after more than forty years I was cured!' In 1947, his diary recorded that he and his mother 'went to tea with Beatty Cole (Nicholson).' Asked by the Surrey Comet in 1970, on the occasion of Rupert's half-centenary, if he regretted not having children of his own, he said, reflecting on his countless young readers, 'Not really... I feel as if I've had thousands of them.'

Although living in Surbiton after World War II, he regularly holidayed in Nantgwynant, near Beddgelert. While at Beddgelert, he stayed at a small mountain cottage named 'Hendre' renovated by and on the land above the Glaslyn river, owned by Lt Col. Sydney Goodchild. Goodchild designed the cottage that in 1956 Alfred bought at the foot of Mynydd Sygun, in Beddgelert, which he subsequently named 'Penlan'.Many of his illustrations of that period are views from that mountain cottage adjacent to Plas Oerddwr. The cottage, with 'one of the finest views in Britain', 'looking out across a broad valley and the fast-flowing River Glaslyn, and proud mountains beyond,' became his permanent home from September 1980, but he still returned to Surbiton several times a year. Bestall kept all his early artwork in the loft of Penlan and told his goddaughter to have a bonfire of his work after his death. but was unable to receive the award in person because he had bone cancer. He also lived in Beaconsfield House, 44 Ewell Road, Surbiton, from 1966 to 1977.

Bestall died on 15 January 1986, aged 93, at Wern Manor Nursing Home in Porthmadog, Wales.