Howard Corn (1943-2016)

Howard Corn in April 2016
 The Eagle Society Gathering at Sevenoaks, Kent

It is with great sadness that we have to report the death on 2 November of Howard Corn, Editor-in-Chief of Eagle Times and one of its major contributors, at the age of 73 years. 

Howard was born in Cheshire on 23 June 1943. His father was a cattle farmer, and Howard spent the first 23 years of his life on various farms across the country, which resulted in a disrupted schooling, as the family moved from one farm to another. 

He was six years old, nearing seven, when a bright new magazine for children hit the newsstands on 14 April 1950. He read Eagle from Number 1 and, though it was not his sole interest, Eagle was destined to have a major impact on his life. Unlike most Eagle readers at the time, his favourite strip was not 'Dan Dare' but, rather, 'The Adventures of PC49'. The western strip 'Jeff Arnold in the Riders of the Range' would become another firm favourite. Both these stories had started life as radio shows, which were listened to by the young Howard Corn.

The first that many of us fellow Eagle enthusiasts knew of Howard was following his attendance at the Eagle Conference, held in London in 1980 to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the birth of Eagle. His first contribution to Eagle fan literature was 'A History of PC49' for the Eagler magazine, serialised over three issues from 1983 to 1985. In 1985 Howard hosted a mini-con for Eagle fans at his home in Northampton. There would be another in Kidderminster the following year, followed by an Eagle Dinner at Bosham in 1987, which started a tradition for Eagle Society Annual Gatherings that has continued to the present.

When Eagler announced a new magazine, Eagle Days, in 1987, Howard became Assistant Editor of the new magazine, and one of its major contributors. As well as writing under his own name Howard would write anonymously or use pen-names. Eagle Day's first issue, Spring 1986, would see the first part of 'Jeff Arnold: A History' written under the pen-name Cowhand Horn, a name chosen due to Howard's cattle farming background and his penchant for westerns. The series would appear in all seven issues of Eagle Days. 

Without Howard, there would have been no Eagle Times. Following the collapse of Eagle Days in 1987, Howard instigated an emergency meeting of like-minded fans at the Westminster Central Hall Comic Mart and afterwards at a nearby cafe, presenting copies of an Eagle Times pilot issue entirely produced by himself. His enthusiasm ensured that an Eagle Times editorial team was swiftly created, with Howard fully at the helm. The first Eagle Times was published in the Spring of 1988, a quarterly journal for the Eagle Society that has had a regular, unbroken run to the present. There have been some changes over the years, but the enduring factor has been Howard. Howard's dedication to Eagle Days and Eagle Times surely stands as a publishing record for fanzines. His editorial hand has been on no less than 116 issues of Eagle Times, every one of which has had more than one article written by him under his own name or one of several pen-names, including: Cowhand Horn, Harold Harpole, James Howard and Jon Johnson. He had a great knowledge of Eagle and its creators, its companion papers (Swift, Girl and Robin) and wrote about these and other 1950/60s publications, including Express Weekly, Rocket, and Lion. He was also a great ambassador for and promoter of the Eagle Society, seeking out and building links with the original contributors and creators of Eagle, and with provincial news media.

Howard showed a great commitment to others, running a youth club in his younger days (like his fictional hero, PC49) and over his lifetime, he donated enough pints to the National Blood Service to fill a milk-float. His other interests included Speedway and Grasstrack racing; he had a love of music, and would often attend Country Music festivals. He was a member of the Cambridge Comics and Story Paper Club (otherwise known as the Cambridge Old Boys' Book Club) and in the 1980s he contributed articles about cowboy movies to their publications. Until he retired from his day job, Howard was a book company representative, and travelled widely across East Anglia and South East England servicing Christian bookshops for the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK). 

He had been diagnosed with lung cancer earlier this year, and whilst he had informed those closest to him and the Editorial Team, it was through the letters page of Eagle Times (published at the end of September this year), that most of our readers were made aware, when he wrote "to thank all the members of the Society who sent me get well cards and best wishes after I was was diagnosed with lung cancer." He was optimistic, as he expressed his appreciation for the thoughts and prayers of members, and he remained so throughout. He described his labour of love on Eagle Times as therapeutic, and was working on it very shortly before he died. Most of the content for 2016's last issue had already been been planned by Howard, and this Christmas will see the completion of 29 years of Eagle Times. Latterley, Howard had wished to see Eagle Times reach a full 30 years of publication, and it is the intention of the Eagle Times Editorial Team to endeavour that it does.

Our sympathies go out to his family and friends, particularly his wife Rosemary, his second wife whom he married in 1992.

Martin Aitchison (1919-2016)

The well-known and respected Eagle and Ladybird Books artist, Martin Aitchison, died peacefully on 22 October 2016 at the age of 96. He had a full life, remaining fit and well until 6 months before his death. He will be best, and most fondly, remembered by Eagle readers as the artist who drew the strip 'Luck of the Legion' from 1952 until 1961.

Born in Birmingham in 1919, after an early education at Ellesmere College in Shropshire, he attended Birmingham School of Art and the Slade School of Art. During World War II he enrolled with Vickers Aircraft at Weybridge, Surrey, as a technical illustrator and afterwards he became a free-lance commercial artist. 

His first published work was for Hulton Press' Lilliput. This was followed by work for Girl, when he was called upon to fill in for artist Ray Bailey on two pages of 'Kitty Hawk', and to draw 'Flick - and the Vanishing New Girl' for Girl Annual No 1. 

He became one of Eagle's major non-'Dan Dare' artists. For nine years he produced weekly strip artwork for 'Luck of the Legion', which was scripted by Geoffrey Bond. 'Luck of the Legion' was one of the few strips in Eagle that had the same artist throughout its run. He also drew for Swift and Swift Annual. When 'Luck' was dropped from Eagle, Martin drew a further three strips for Eagle, plus one for Eagle Annual, before leaving in 1963 to work for Ladybird Books. He became one of their principal artists and produced artwork for around 70 titles, until 1990. 

For members of the Eagle Society, their first acquaintance with the man, rather than his work, was when in 1996, Martin attended an Eagle Society Annual Dinner at Sparsholt, as Guest of Honour.

From 1998, although "retired", he teamed again with writer Geoffrey Bond and drew 'Justin Tyme - Ye Hapless Highwayman', a humorous strip, which ran for over 5 years in Eagle Times.

There is a list of Martin's Eagle work and references on our earlier blogpost: Eagle Artists - Martin Aitchison (from which some of this post has drawn).

Charles Chilton (1917 - 2013)

Charles Chilton, MBE

Charles (Frederick William) Chilton, MBE, the renowned BBC radio producer and writer, best known to Eagle readers as the scriptwriter of ‘Riders of the Range’ and the author and producer of the BBC radio serial Journey into Space, died on 2nd January, 2013, aged 95.

Charles was born into poverty on 15th June, 1917 and was raised by his grandmother in King's Cross, London. He joined the BBC as a messenger at the age of 15, soon becoming an assistant (or as he described it in his autobiography, "assistant to the assistant"!) in the BBC’s gramophone library. By the age of 18 he had moved into radio presentation and production. He developed a passion for jazz and presented many music programmes including ‘Swing Time’ and ‘Radio Rhythm Club’. His first major radio production was Alastair Cook’s ‘I Hear America Singing’.

During the Second World War, he served with the RAF as a radio instructor before being transferred to Armed Forces radio. In Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) he ran the forces radio station with David Jacobs. After the war he returned to London and (following his divorce from an earlier unsuccessful marriage) he married Penny, a BBC secretary. In 1949 he created and produced a popular weekly BBC radio show called Riders of the Range, which was described as "a musical Western drama". 

When in 1950 the Editor of Eagle, Marcus Morris, obtained permission from the BBC for a comic-strip version of Riders of the Range, Charles took on the writing of the weekly strip, too. He continued to write and produce the radio show until 1953 and to write the scripts for Eagle’s ‘Riders of the Range’ strip and scripts and stories for numerous Riders of the Range and Eagle annuals, into the early 1960s. He also wrote the script for ‘Flying Cloud’, a western strip that appeared in Girl. As the comic strip ‘Riders of the Range’ developed, Charles became an expert on the Wild West and introduced authentic historic western stories into the series. He also wrote historical accounts of the West, such as The Book of the West (Odhams, 1961) which, after publication in America, earned him The Western Heritage Award for Juvenile Books in 1963.

When Riders of the Range finished on radio (1953) Charles was tasked by the BBC with creating a science fiction series, though he then new nothing of the subject. The result was the hugely successful Journey into Space, featuring spaceman Jet Morgan and his crew (Doc, Mitch and Lemmy), which ran to three series (totalling 58 episodes) all of which he wrote and produced between 1953 and 1955. Journey into Space was among the last radio programmes to attract audiences greater in number than television. The series' subsequent transformation to book and comic strip form under his own authorship assured Chilton’s international recognition. His research for the series led to him becoming a keen amateur astronomer. Among his other radio production credits in the fifties are a several editions of The Goon Show in 1953, 1957 and 1958.

In 1962 Charles Chilton wrote and produced a radio musical based on World War 1 songs, called The Long, Long Road. In 1963 this was transformed through his collaboration with Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop into the stage production: Oh! What a Lovely War, which then (in 1969) was turned into a film by writer Len Deighton and director Richard Attenborough.

In 1976 Charles was awarded the MBE, which was presented to him by the Queen Mother. Although he retired from the BBC soon after, he continued to write and for many years was a Guide for London Walks. In the 1980s he wrote a sequel Journey into Space radio play, The Return from Mars, and two science fiction serials in the Journey into Space vein: Space Force and Space Force II. He later wrote a further Journey into Space radio play, Frozen in Time, which was broadcast by the BBC in 2008. The  Journey into Space serials are often re-broadcast on the BBC's Radio 4 Extra station and are available as audio-CD collections and audio-downloads.

Charles Chilton's autobiography, Auntie's Charlie, was published by Fantom Press in 2011 along with a new edition of his first Journey into Space novel, Operation Luna. The second and third Journey into Space novels, The Red Planet and The World in Peril, followed from the same publisher in 2012.

The books were published as limited edition hardbacks but are now available in paperback.

A. Bruce Cornwell - obituary

Centrespread illustration by Bruce Cornwell
Spaceship Away, No. 12, Summer 2007 

Sadly we have heard of the death, on 2nd March 2012, of one of the original artists who worked on the 'Dan Dare' strip, Bruce Cornwell.

Though born in Canada, A. Bruce Cornwell was raised as a child in California, USA, before coming to Europe to study art at Regent Street Polytechnic in London and the Académie Julian in Paris. During the Second World War he served in the British Merchant Navy. After the war he became a maritime artist and freelance illustrator, before joining the staff of Eagle in early 1950.

In an article written for Eagle Times in 1998 Bruce told how he came to work on Eagle, after answering an advertisement in a trade paper, presumably in late 1949. Although used to working solo, he then found himself as part of a team working on 'Dan Dare' with Frank Hampson and the rest of the studio team in the lean-to shed and former bakery which was the original studio in Southport. His main contribution to 'Dan Dare' was not so much on figure work, though he could do that if needed, but specialising in technical subjects: buildings, machinery, spaceships: "All the work stemmed from Frank's superb roughs and my reason for being there was to take over most of the drawing of machinery."

After objecting to the excessive working hours, Bruce left the studio some time during Dan Dare's first adventure (which, incidentally, ran for about a year and a half). Later,  after the team's move to the new studio in Epsom, Bruce returned under the promise that the work schedule would be less demanding. It wasn't, and after he was refused leave when the work began affecting his health, he left again.

In 1960, after Hampson's team had been broken up, he returned to work with Don Harley on four 'Dan Dare' stories, staying for two years until 1962, when Keith Watson took over.

In addition to 'Dan Dare', Bruce's contributions to Eagle included 'Ships Through the Ages', (some) 'Tommy Walls', and four cutaway drawings, all of nautical subjects. He contributed many of the illustrations, including a number of cutaway drawing designs, to Dan Dare's Spacebook (1953) and Dan Dare's Space Annual 1963. In addition to his work for Eagle he also drew 'Sammy In Space' (with Desmond Walduck) in Swift, 'Space Captain Jim Stalwart' in Junior Mirror, 'Danny Dare' (with Leo Baxendale) in Wham! and 'Journey into Space' (following Ferdinando Tacconi) in Express Weekly. The scope of his commercial art included book covers and line illustrations, the best known being those he did for the Kemlo and Tas children's science fiction series by E.C. Eliott. 

By 1998, when he wrote for Eagle Times, he was "still working" but had retired from commercial work projects, dividing his time between painting and exhibiting, assisting his wife with her business and indulging his favourite hobby: maintaining and running a number of classic cars. Bruce was one of the Eagle Society's special guests at the Grail Centre, Pinner for our 13th Annual Dinner in 1999. More recently he had been persuaded to contribute a number of 'Dan Dare' themed painted illustrations to Spaceship Away, including the one shown above.

The news of Bruce's death arrived with us after the Spring 2012 issue of Eagle Times went to press. The issue includes an article by Jeremy Briggs on Bruce's cutaway drawings. We will be including an obituary in our Summer issue.

John Ryan (1921 - 2009)

John Christopher Gerald Ryan was born in Edinburgh on 21 March, 1921. His father being in the diplomatic service, he spent some of his early life abroad, but he received his education at Ampleforth College, Yorkshire. It was there he first gained an interest in cartooning (writing and drawing for the school magazine was offered as an alternative to a thrashing for a minor offence!)

During the second World War he served with the Lincolnshire Regiment, mainly in Burma, and when not otherwise occupied he sketched and drew caricatures, which were published in army magazines. After the war, he attended art classes in London at the Regent Street Polytechnic, following which, he joined Harrow School as Assistant Art Master. He had met his future wife Priscilla while at the Regent Street Polytechnic, and in 1950 they married. As a wedding present, a friend introduced them to Marcus Morris, then priest and editor of Anvil.

John produced some illustrations for Anvil, and was challenged by Morris to create a humorous strip for a new children's magazine, which would be Eagle. The result was 'Captain Pugwash', "the story of a bad buccaneer & of the many sticky ends which nearly befell him". The black and white strip appeared on the lower half of page 5 of the first issue of Eagle. Although later destined to become successful as an animated television series and a series of books, Captain Pugwash's life in Eagle was short. Deemed too young for the Eagle's target audience, Pugwash sailed away after his 19-episode first adventure. But John Ryan was a talent too good to waste, and Marcus Morris had already asked him to create a new strip, which he did - based on a skit of Priscilla's "ideal man". 'Harris Tweed' began in issue 15 of Eagle and ended, after twelve years of weekly episodes, in 1962. Along the way, John also created, wrote and drew successful strips for Eagle's companion papers, Girl ('Lettice Leefe, the Greenest Girl in the School') and Swift ('Sir Boldasbrass'), and for all three papers' associated Annuals. After Girl folded, John continued to draw 'Lettice Leefe' for Princess - accomplishing a 16-year run of weekly episodes.

Foregoing Harrow School's offer of a job as Art Master, John remained Assistant Art Master until 1955, when he became a full-time freelance writer and artist. Although 'Captain Pugwash' had not been a success in Eagle, John Ryan worked on his beloved character, and drew and wrote the first of what was to become a series of Captain Pugwash books. In 1956, after many rejections, Captain Pugwash found a publisher in The Bodley Head. He also sold the idea for an animated series of 'Captain Pugwash' to BBC Television. His animation technique was innovative, using painted backdrops and cut-out, two-dimensional figures with movable limbs and mouths, made from painted card and held together with paperclips. Levers allowed him and his assistants to manoeuvre the figures and their expressions for real-time animation - and live transmission! A pilot production was so successful that it resulted in 1957 in a series of 58 black and white episodes, and for eight years he drew a weekly 'Captain Pugwash' strip for Radio Times. A 'Captain Pugwash' strip also appeared (briefly) in Swift (1958) and Playland (1974), also written and drawn by John. 'Sir Prancelot' (from another TV series) appeared in Playland in 1972. From 1963, for 43 years he drew weekly cartoons for The Catholic Herald, but it is for his children's publications and programmes that he is most fondly remembered.

In 1969 he created a 13-part series called 'Mary, Mungo and Midge' for BBC Television. He followed this with 'The Adventures of Sir Prancelot' (32 episodes), and in 1974 he returned to 'Captain Pugwash' again, producing a new series of 30 colour episodes. In the 1980s 'The Ark Stories' (on ITV) featured John Ryan in his studio to introduce each of his stories of animals from Noah's Ark with a sketch.

John and Priscilla moved from Kensington to Rye, East Sussex, in 1988, and John continued to work until shortly before his death in Rye hospital on 22 July 2009. It was at Rye that John was an Eagle Society guest of honour for our annual gathering in 1993. John allowed us a visit to is home and studio, provided us with a tour of Rye and joined the "Eagle Society Players" for a play reading of 'Harris Tweed'.

The illustration by John Ryan is from the Spring 1993 edition of Eagle Times

Obituaries:

• Steve Holland's Bear Alley (also contains a comprehensive bibliography)
• Links to various newspaper and magazine obituaries
  

Channel 4 newspiece on YouTube:

For other Captain Pugwash clips on YouTube Click Here

For an interactive storybook of Captain Pugwash and the Sea Monster click on the graphic below:

Giorgio Bellavitis (1926 - 2009)

Giorgio Bellavitis  (1926 - 2009) was born and died in Venice, though he spent a number of years in England. Starting out as a comic book artist, but changing career to architecture, his reputation in his later years was for his contribution as an architect to the restoration of Venice.

After being held prisoner together by the Nazis during the Second World War, Bellavitis and his friends Mario Faustinelli and Alberto Ongaro later set themselves up as publishers and gathered more artists and writers to form the Grupo Veneziano (Venetian Group). Their first magazine, called Albo Uragano (White Hurricane), was later renamed Asso di Picche, after its lead strip, which was pencilled by Hugo Pratt and inked by Bellavitis and Faustinelli. After drawing the first episode of ‘Junglemen’, Bellavitis then drew ‘The Adventures of Robin Hood’ under the pseudonym George Summers. After 1948, when Asso di Picche folded, and until 1954, when he moved to England, he worked mainly on Il Vittorioso (The Conqueror). His strips in this period included ‘I Cavalieri del Corvo’, ‘Acqua Cattiva’, ‘Il Palio di Siena’, and ‘Amburgo 1947’. 

In England, he was instrumental in introducing the Italian illustrator Rimaldo D’Ami (Roy Dami, founder of the Damy Agency) to Britain, and was the first of many Italian comic strip artists to be published in Britain via D'Ami's agency.

Bellavitis’ first English strip was ‘Paul English’ for Swift. He then drew ‘Mark, the Youngest Disciple’ to a script by Chad Varah, for Eagle. Bellavitis stood in for Richard Jennings on two complete ‘Storm Nelson’ adventures (which were was later reprinted in Italy as 'Kid Tempesta'), the first of which was set in his place of birth. He also drew for Eagle Annual and Swift Annual, including the illustrations for a text story ‘The Winged Devils - a tale of the Ancient Vikings’ in Swift Annual No 2. He worked for a short time on Express Weekly, drawing ‘Rodney Flood’, and he is known to have done some illustrations for the Sunday Pictorial Children’s Annual. In 1956 he helped out on Eagle’s ‘Jeff Arnold in Riders of the Range’. His work also appeared in Playhour and Treasure. In 1958, however, he returned to Italy to pursue a career in architecture.

For many years, and until his death, Professor Giorgio Bellavitis was actively involved in the conservation and restoration of Venice, advising UNESCO and other bodies. Giorgio Bellavitis' projects in Venice included the garden design and landscaping for Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, the home of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, and from 1997 to 2005 direction of the restoration of Ca’Foscari. Giorgio Bellavitis wrote and co-authored a number of books and articles, including ‘Venice: a City in the Sea of History’, which prefaces the Heritage Guide to Venice published by the Touring Club of Italy. His death was reported on 21 May 2009 in Venice, the city that inspired him.

A fuller obituary and bibliography can be read on Steve Holland's Bear Alley blog.

Previous posts on eagle-times:

•  Regarding Giorgio Bellavitis
  
•  Eagle Artists - Georgio Bellavitis
  

Photo of Giorgio Bellavitis: Il Gazzettino

Eagle Artists - Michael Charlton (1923 - 2008)

Michael Alan Charlton was born in Poole, Dorset, and studied at Poole School of Art and Edinburgh College of Art. An illustrator in black and white and colour, his only know contribution to Eagle was the single black and white picture shown here, which he drew to illustrate an Arthur Catherall story called ‘Ten Days to Christmas’ - “a short story of Ojibwa fur trappers in the land of perpetual snow”. It appeared, appropriately enough, on 14^th December, 1951 (in Eagle Vol 2 No 36). He also illustrated ‘Professor Kitto and the Magic Ray’ in another Eagle-associated publication: Swift Annual No 2 (Hulton Press, 1955), for which he drew three black and white pictures. Charlton illustrated dozens of books from 1954 through 2003, including the children's book Wheezy (Bodley Head, 1988), which he also wrote. He lived in Dorset, and died there after a long illness on 23^rd June, 2008.

An obituary and bibliography of Michael Charlton can be read at Steve Holland's Bear Alley, which is where we learned of Michael Charlton's death.

Sir Arthur C. Clarke (1917 - 2008)

Arthur C. Clarke, the writer and visionary, a former Chairman of the British Interplanetary Society, has died, three months after celebrating his 90th birthday.

Born on 16th December, 1917, in Minehead, Somerset, Arthur Clarke was the eldest of four children. Before leaving school he joined the British Interplanetary Society, which had been founded in 1933. During the Second World War, he served in the RAF as a radar specialist. Afterwards he attended Kings College, London, graduating in 1948 with first-class honours in physics and mathematics.

In 1945 he sold a short story called ‘Rescue Party’ to Astounding Science Fiction, and began his science fiction writing career. In 1947, ten years before the launch of the first artificial satellite, he wrote a technical paper, published in Wireless World, demonstrating the feasibility of using artificial satellites as relay stations for radio communications. The “geostationary orbit” now used by numerous communications satellites, has since been designated the “Clarke Orbit” by the International Astronomical Union.

It was around this time that he wrote a story ‘The Fires Within’ that would later appear in Eagle, under the pseudonym Charles Willis. Arthur Clarke’s contribution to the early days of Eagle and ‘Dan Dare’, for which he was for a time scientific advisor, was marked here on the occasion of his 90th birthday. It may have been small in the overall scheme of his life, but that association is remembered affectionately and respectfully here.

Arthur Clarke became a prolific writer of fact and fiction, with almost 100 books to his name; books such as The Exploration of Space, Childhood’s End, The Sands of Mars, 2001: A Space Odyssey and Rendezvous with Rama. The novel 2001: A Space Odyssey resulted from four years collaboration with the film director Stanley Kubrick, with whom he shared the credit for the movie screenplay.

Arthur C. Clarke was knighted in 1988.

Walt Howarth (1928 - 2008)

Walt Howarth, who has just died, aged 80, was born on 1st January 1928 in Bolton, Lancashire. His talent for drawing faces was noticed at 4 years of age, and at 13 he was offered a scholarship at Bolton Art School, where he studied for three years. His first professional work was for the cover of Bolton's Salute to the Soldier Week programme in 1946. An avid fan of Bolton Wanderers Football Club, soon Walt was drawing their programme covers and getting five shillings a time for caricatures of the players.

A prolific (if largely unsung) artist, the majority of his work was (via Industrial Art Services) for World Distributors Ltd, whose annuals will be remembered for their distinctive yellow spines. From 1950-1959 he painted six John Wayne Annuals and seventy-seven John Wayne Comic covers, plus for the annuals, illustrations to text stories, endpapers, title/contents pages, and the odd feature or game/quiz page.


In addition, during the 1950s and 1960s, Walt painted covers for many of WDL's Annuals including titles such as: Bronco Lane, Bonanza, Cheyenne, Tenderfoot, Billy the Kid, Rawhide, Maverick, Western Roundup, Cisco Kid, Gunsmoke, Gene Autry, Rawhide, Wells Fargo, Range Rider, Roy Rogers , Wagon Train, TV Favourites, Superman, Batman, Tarzan, Green Hornet, Bewitched and High Chaparral, work which required the skills of a portraitist in capturing the likenesses of the characters seen on television and in film.

Some of his other work (of particular interest to Eagle Society members) included the box art for the 'Merit' Dan Dare Cosmic Ray Gun (produced by J & L Randall in about 1953), and most possibly for other Eagle-related toys of that era. In the 1960s he painted the covers for Dan Dare's Space Annual 1963, and for Eagle Annual 1965.

Of more general interest, he was also responsible for the cover illustrations of the first two Doctor Who Annuals.

An illustrated article, 'Walt Howarth' by Derek Wilson was published in Eagle Times Volume 18 No 3 (Autumn 2005), and gives more details of Walt's career. It can be read at the Gateway site, where it was posted in March, 2006.

Other internet sites reporting the death and and paying tribute to Walt Howarth:

• This is Lancashire
  
• Bear Alley
• Down the Tubes
• Lew Stringer