{"id":439415,"date":"2026-02-22T09:52:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-22T09:52:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/439415\/"},"modified":"2026-02-22T09:52:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-22T09:52:07","slug":"how-illustrator-william-heath-robinson-became-a-national-catchphrase","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/439415\/","title":{"rendered":"How illustrator William Heath Robinson became a national catchphrase"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">His cartoons of improbable military machines \u2013 pulleys, pipes and teetering platforms \u2013 offered a gentle, satirical counterpoint to the grim realities of war and helped to make him a household name.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Speaking to the Secret Surrey series, Moira MacQuaide, a historian and writer who gives talks on William Heath Robinson, said: &#8220;The house he lived in is still here in Cranleigh, which is nice.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I don&#8217;t know how the phrase came about, but it was certainly around in his time as one of his cartoons was titled something like, &#8216;Heath Robinson doing a Heath Robinson of a Heath Robinson drawing&#8217;,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It is quite convoluted with people doing different things, up ladders, paintworks.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"His cartoons of improbable military machines \u2013 pulleys, pipes and teetering platforms \u2013 offered a gentle, satirical counterpoint&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":439416,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[6225,6485,6486,1120,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-439415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=439415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439415\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/439416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=439415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=439415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=439415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}