I’ve been re-reading my copy of Doctor Who and the Daleks, the very first Doctor Who novelization, and was struck by the stark line drawings of the original cover (not my edition, which has the familiar Chris Achilleos art) and the internal illustrations. They are pretty vivid, and as someone elsewhere commented, not really what you’d expect for a children’s book.

I dug a little deeper and found that they are part of the early work of Arnold Schwartzman, born in 1936 and still living, whose CV is simply extraordinary. In 1963, the year before he did his Doctor Who art, he was photographing the Beatles.

As well as building up his own portfolio of photography and design, he has written several books about art, with Art Deco being a particular interest. He moved to Los Angeles in 1978 and among other assignments was the head of design for the 1988 Olympics in that city.

This cycling poster is also one of his.

At the turn of the century he designed the posters for the Oscar ceremonies in 1997, 1998, 1999 and 2000.

In 2010 he created two Art Deco style murals for the Queen Elizabeth ocean liner, though I have only found a photo of one of them.

But that is not all. As well as states design and writing books, Schwartzman has directed a few films, including the 1981 documentary, Genocide, which won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature.

So yeah. The guy who did those line drawings for David Whitaker’s children’s book ended up winning an Oscar for a documentary about the Holocaust that he made seventeen years later. It’s difficult to think of a visual contributor to the Whoniverse who has had such a massive cultural impact.

Emphasis on the word visual, of course. A more prominent figure in Doctor Who won the 1995 Oscar for Best Live Action Short Film – one Peter Capaldi. And it would be a different matter if Ridley Scott hadn’t left the BBC immediately after he was asked to design the original Daleks.