Cartoons and Contraptions: The Wonderful World of W. Heath Robinson

For over a century, W. Heath Robinson, whom the novelist, Philip Pullman called ‘the immortal contraptioneer’, has been famous for drawing rickety, bizarrely complicated devices that carry out the simplest of tasks like potato peeling, wart removal or pancake making. He became so famous for them that in 1933, he was the obvious person to illustrate Norman Hunter’s Professor Branestawm books and, in 1943, Bletchley Park named one of their code-breaking machines after him.  Much later still, some of the contraptions in Wallace and Gromit’s The Wrong Trousers are based on a scale model of a gadget filled house that he made for the Ideal Home Show in 1934. Art historian Barry Venning will  elaborate with entertaining filmic exemplars to illustrate his lecture.

If you cannot attend this event we offer free entry for any one of out autumn series for guests and those considering membership. Details on our website or contact the membership secretary Karen Walker.