Lecture 08 April 2026 Cartoons and Contraptions: The Wonderful World of W Heath Robinson, by Barry Venning

It may have been a false start to the arrival of Spring but members of the Arts Society Horsham and visitors kept their date for this April lecture to hear all about the surreal world created by cartoonist and illustrator W Heath Robinson who became a legend in his life time.

We learnt about his quiet, unassuming character, which contrasted with the hugely complicated machines and gadgets invented in his cartoons and illustrations, often used as a gentle satire and to great effect as a morale booster for the British troops during the two wars. As early as 1912, the name Heath Robinson entered the Oxford Dictionary as a by word for ludicrously elaborate contraptions that invite a good laugh rather than for their practicality!

W Heath Robinson was born in 1872 in North London in a milieu of artistic creation. His father was an art editor and illustrator and all his siblings also became successful artists as calligrapher and book illustrators. Heath Robinson’s early career as book illustrator flourished under the mentorship of Sir Bruce Stirling Ingram and achieved early success by the time of the first world war. He gained popularity with his patriotic satire — for example, the “Goose step being taught by a goose” and “Picking the Picklehaube to relieve trench boredom”.

The post-war years saw Heath Robinson taking on commercial work such as “Production of Jonny Walker Whiskey” and commissions with the Great Western Railway which included a device to resuscitate stale scones! Life between the wars heralded the art deco years where he took on an ambitious commission to design a 35meter painting to decorate the cocktail bar on the Empress liner in 1930, with the help of his son who was a Benedictine monk! It was a time of the growth of the leisure industry in which Heath Robinson partook enthusiastically — such as the “Lawn tennis for the middle age armchair”. Health Robinson’s Bauhaus design for modern living was the “one piece dining room suite of tubular steel” after the Wassily chair! However, his most iconic design of this period was a half-scale working house for the Ideal Home Exhibition in 1934.

W Heath Robinson passed away in 1944. His final illustration, in a very poignant letter to his son, Dom Basil Robinson, was of an angel with wings but whose ascent would be halted by the cob webs above — a modest man to the last. Over the course of his career as cartoonist, he had published thousands of illustrations of hilariously absurd inventions, often reflecting the political and social backdrop of the time which established his indelible reputation. As well as the entry in the Oxford Dictionary, a code breaking machine at Bletchley Park was named after him in his honour.

Today, the legend of Heath Robinson lives on with a large modern day following of artists, writers, architects and film makers including Nick Park of Wallace & Gromit, Philip Pullman and Thomas Heatherwick. Indeed, the delightful homage is cleverly reinvented in “The Wrong Trousers” of Wallace & Gromit! Heath Robinson’s “inventions” are prolific, but who can forget “The Multi-Movement Cat Silencer”, “The Sun Bathing Wheel” or “The Wart Chair”?

The morning lecture provided the perfect antidote to a different kind of surreal reality we found ourselves outside of the lecture hall!