"In the lands of the North, where the black rocks stand guard against the cold sea, in the dark night that is very long, the men of the Northlands sit by the great log fires and they tell a tale... ..."
If those opening words mean anything to you, then news that Oliver Postgate has died will probably cause you sadness. Depending on your age, you may remember Ivor the Engine, Noggin the Nog, the Pingwings, the Pogles, the Clangers and/or Bagpuss - and if you do, you probably recall them with fondness even twenty, thirty or forty years later, such is the gentle power of Postgate's work.
![[RSS Newsfeed]](/themes/sotto/images/valid-rss.png)
![[This is a Roller site]](/themes/sotto/images/roller-logo.gif){kind=logo}
Postgate was imprisoned as a conchie during the Second World. Latterly he wrote a political blog for the New Statesman. http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/oliver-postgate. On his homepage, you can find a dialogue between God and the Devil, entitled The Law of Unintended Consequences. http://www.oliverpostgate.co.uk/index.html
Posted by Richard Veryard on December 09, 2008 at 06:19 PM GMT+00:00 #
Yes - the conscientious objector phase was mentioned in his autobiography (incidentally, if you get the audio cassette version, as I did at the time, you have the added bonus of having OP read it to you :^).
Many thanks for the links; there are more "God and the Devil" dialogues on the New Statesman blog pages, too. Much more to my taste than those po-faced Screwtape Letters ;^)
Posted by Robin Wilton on December 09, 2008 at 07:02 PM GMT+00:00 #
I have vague recollections of watching the Clangers, in my extreme youth, and looking up at the sky with increased interest afterwards, curious about what might be up there (and, let's face it, looking for Planet Clang).
An interest in astronomy expanded to an interest in Astrophysics, and from there, to an interest in Physics in general.
Was Oliver Postgate involved in me studying Physics at University? Probably not, however, that early nudge in an interesting direction, towards a wider view of the Universe, is appreciated.
RIP, gentle animator.
Posted by Dave Walker on December 09, 2008 at 07:57 PM GMT+00:00 #
For some reason, in my first comment (above), I wrote "Second World" and forgot the "War". Was this a Freudian slip perhaps? Or just a Clanger?
Posted by Richard Veryard on December 09, 2008 at 09:56 PM GMT+00:00 #