Motoring art: Norman Thelwell

By Mick Walsh

| 22 Dec 2025

Classic & Sports Car – Motoring art: Norman Thelwell

Britain needed some cheering up after the Second World War, and that led to a renaissance of cartoon illustrators.

As a result, such artistic talents as Carl Giles, JAK, Ronald Searle and Russell Brockbank became household names.

Norman Thelwell was another very popular cartoonist who flourished during the 1950s, and although he is most fondly remembered for his equestrian subjects, his illustrative work for Punch covered a wide range of themes – including motoring.

The world of motoring provided Norman Thelwell with a near-endless source of inspiration

Cartoon collections proved to be popular books, and Thelwell’s early titles, starting with Angels on Horseback in 1957, sold well.

In 1974, a review of his motoring cartoons, Belt Up, was published by Eyre Methuen, and it featured a wealth of characters from shabby vagrants to posh chauffeurs.

The motoring boom provided a rich range of topics, including driving instructors, accidents, road signs, car salesmen, sports-car drivers and children.

Thelwell delighted in motoring developments, particularly the fitting of seatbelts, which inspired many cartoons including the book’s Mini cover artwork.

Posh chauffeurs were among the characters in Norman Thelwell’s cartoons

Thelwell grew up in Cheshire. He struggled academically, but it was through his art that he best expressed himself.

Childhood holidays to North Wales were an annual highlight: he loved the countryside and later became a superb landscape artist, but that talent was overshadowed by his popular cartoons.

Recruited into the army at the age of 18 in 1941, Thelwell trained as a wireless operator and was sent to India with the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers.

He always carried a sketchbook and drew continually as therapy.

Norman Thelwell’s cartoons brought cheer to many in post-WW2 Britain

During the war he contributed to the Royal Army Ordnance Corps Gazette and even made some money selling his Christmas-card designs to fellow servicemen.

With peacetime came the debut publication of one of his drawings in the London Opinion magazine, which encouraged Thelwell to sign up for evening classes in Nottingham.

Here he met fellow student Rhona, and they married in ’49.

A degree course at Liverpool College of Art led to a teaching career, but as more of his work was published, including his first sketch in Punch in 1952, Thelwell turned to illustrating full-time.

Norman Thelwell indulged his passion for drawing vehicles and machinery in his various cartoons

Across the following 25 years, Punch published a further 1500 of his cartoons on a wide range of subjects, including 60 front covers, and among his fans was art editor Russell Brockbank.

Thelwell’s humorous studies of British characters at work and play led to newspaper commissions, too, including the cartoon strip Penelope and Kipper in the Sunday Express.

Many of his 34 books were translated around the world, and the Thelwell pony series proved hugely popular in Japan.

For his final 25 years, Thelwell lived near Romsey in Hampshire’s Test Valley, where he died in 2004.

As part of the 80th anniversary of VE Day this year, Southampton City Art Gallery held an exhibition of his army drawings entitled A Cartoonist in Wartime.

Belt Up: Thelwell’s Motoring Manual is published by Quiller and priced at £16.99 (see quillerpublishing.com). For more work, see thelwell.org.uk

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