EXTRACTS: The Art of Commando (illustrators special) © 2019 The Book Palace (144 PAGES in Full edition)

46 England I don’t think. It’s peculiar to Scotland the tenement building. I went to the local primary school. The war started in 1939 and I was just coming up six when I contracted diphtheria, which was looked on as killer number one for little children. It was 1940 and the blackout and I remember being taken away in the dark by a very tall man who drove this brown van with a lamp hanging from a blue coat which he wore. I was taken to King’s Cross Hospital, and confined to a bed which was very much higher at the bottom. This is the way they used to treat diphtheria, your feet were about three feet higher than your head. I don’t know what the purpose was, but I remember looking out the window upside down and seeing two guys lifting something heavy up on to the roof. It was war-time as I said, this enormous great round thing with a fan and it took an age. And all of a sudden I saw this fan thing starting to turn. It was an air-raid siren being erected on the roof of King’s Cross Hospital. And I heard this enormous “Wheeyhhhhh”—I got the fright ABOVE: Drawing of an Australian serviceman from the Burma campaign—you can feel the weight of the 303 rifle! FACING PAGE ABOVE: Illustration of a World War 1 German infantryman demonstrating Gordon's ability to get detail correct combined wiith strong characterisation. FACING PAGE BELOW: Gordon's ruler, ink rag and some of his earliest Commando stories— photo supplied by Gordon's daughter Gil. © The Estate of Gordon Livingstone