The little green shunting engine “from the top left-hand corner of Wales” made his TV debut in 1959, with a picture book following in 1962, which has now been reprinted.
The “Welsh magic” was actually created by Hendon puppeteer and children’s author Oliver Postgate, a cousin of the late film actress and Murder She Wrote star Angela Lansbury.
His original story has been brought back to life from the first print edition with Peter Firmin’s watercolour illustrations.
Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin planning the first ‘Ivor the Engine’ picture book (Image: Candy Jar Books) Postgate, who died in 2008 aged 83, was an animator and puppeteer who created children’s television shows such as Bagpuss, Pingwings and The Clangers as well as Ivor the Engine.
He came from a political family, his father Raymond Postgate a political journalist and his mother the daughter of George Lansbury, the 1930s Labour Party leader from east London who had famously led the 1921 Rates strike when he was Mayor of Poplar as well as being grandfather to future actor Angela Lansbury.
He set Ivor the Engine in the fictional Welsh village of Llaniog, with its driver ‘Jones the Steam’. The TV show stood out for its ground-breaking stop-motion animation using watercolour cut-outs and a bassoon soundtrack.
The reprint of the 1962 picture book is published in paperback at £12.99 or hardback £20 by Candy Jar Books, distributed by the Books Council of Wales.
