Lewes Live Literature Festival -
Halas and Batchelor Cartoons

I sit in Vivien Halas’ large kitchen on Southover High Street, with a cup of coffee, and she embarks on the tale of her parents’ life. It takes nearly two hours, though I get the feeling she could go on for days: to help illustrate it she refers constantly to the book she has recently written about them. ‘They’ are John Halas and Joy Batchelor, who ran the Halas and Batchelor Cartoon animation studio between 1940 and 1990, bringing out, amongst many other things, the magnificent film ‘Animal Farm’. The book is gorgeous: I can’t keep my eyes off it. I covet it. If she had gone on for days, I would have willingly sat there and listened. Vivien is party to a treasure trove of information about one of the keystones of British movie history: this is what she will be talking about in the Lewes Live Literature Festival.

Her father was a Hungarian Jew from a humble background. He learnt to animate as a youngster in the early 30’s when he got a job laying out subtitles for films: he furtively drew tiny cartoons in the corners of the subtitle bands. Eventually he started making adverts in his country, was spotted by an English company, and brought over to London. “He was looking for animators to help him, and my mother walked in and showed him a strip of cartoons she had done,” says Vivien, pointing to the cartoons in the book. “He was smitten, because he realised she was more talented than he was. It was intrigue at first sight.”
She got the job, clearly, and they became partners in both senses of the word.