About the Author

Eric Hill was born in London and attended Pooles Park Elementary and Tollington Park Central schools until the outbreak of World War Two. Prior to the outbreak of hostilities, 12 year-old Eric was evacuated to the small village of Bluntisham in Huntingdonshire. But he returned to London for Christmas and stayed there for the rest of the war. Eric left school at fifteen to start his first job with a shipping office in the City. The following year he joined an art studio as a messenger. This was a bigger break than he had imagined, because at the studio was a well-known Austrian cartoonist, named Tim, who encouraged him to start drawing cartoons. Gradually Eric became more of an art assistant than a messenger and spent more time at the drawing board under Tim's guidance. Tim was a superb artist and cartoonist and later had his own BBC TV show for children. After a stint with the Royal Air Force in Germany, Eric Hill returned to the studio again. His cartooning work began to be published in national magazines and newspapers. He started a weekly strip for the London magazine Illustrated and did small story sketches for Lilliput. After a year of drawing cartoons, Eric Hill left the studio and joined the art department of an advertising agency as a visualiser. The next important step was an appointment with F.H.K Henrion at Erwin Wasey, a large advertising agency in Park Lane. In 1