St Pauls from the River

Ronald Lampitt was born in Worcester in 1906. He painted in oil and watercolour but is best known for his work as an illustrator or children’s books and railway posters. The many magazines he contributed to included Zoo, Passing Show, Illustrated, Modern Wonder, John Bull, Look and Learn and Treasure. In the 1930s he produced a number of very popular travel posters for railway companies including the Great Western Railway and Southern Railway. As a book illustrator he worked for the Oxford University Press and most memorably for Ladybird Books, for whom he illustrated many publications. In association with his brother-in-law, Henry James Deverson, he produced the Mainly for Children series, published by the Sunday Times in the early 1960s. He is known for his extensive aerial views of landscapes and townscapes, which are the result of his war service in RAF Intelligence where he was employed making drawings of bombing targets based on aerial photographs. He lived in Hampstead and later in Sidcup, Kent.