John Godfrey Bernard Worsley was born in Liverpool on 16 February 1919. He was the son of a retired naval officer and grew up on the family coffee farm at Kabuka, north of the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. In 1928 the world coffee market collapsed and John was sent to St Winifred’s Boarding School, his fees subsidised by the Royal Navy Trust. He won a scholarship to Brighton College, and spent three years studying fine art at Goldsmiths’ College in south London. He then worked as an illustrator for romance magazines before joining the Royal Navy. As a midshipman, he was the youngest of Kenneth Clark’s official war artists and the only one to be captured by the enemy. He took part in the Allied landings at Sicily, Reggio and Salerno. He initially worked as a painter, but changed to pencil for practical reasons. In November 1943, Lieutenant Worsley accompanied a small team of saboteurs to the island of Lussin Piccolo, in the Gulf of Venice, where it was hoped to make contact with some of the Allied prisoners who were on the run following the Italian Armistice. It was known that the Germans were planning to occupy the island, but not that they had moved their timetable forward by a week. Worsley’s fishing boat sailed right into the midst of the German forces. He was held at the naval prisoner of war camp Marlag-O, near Bremen, where he recorded prison life with materials supplied by the Red Cross, assembling such an impressive portfolio that German admirals later visited the camp to admire his work. He was also involved in a celebrated escape attempt – later turned into a feature film, which involved use of a dummy prisoner, ‘Albert, RN’, a life-sized figure created from wire and papier-maché clad in a naval greatcoat. It was held between two soldiers during roll calls, fooling the camp guards into thinking they had a full complement of prisoners, while escapee Lieutenant Mewes, RN made his getaway. For four days, Albert, with his ping-pong ball eyes and no hands (his sleeves were stuffed into his jacket pockets), mustered on parade; unfortunately, Mewes was recaptured on the north coast of Germany. Two months later, Albert was finally rumbled when a second escape attempt was foiled and the goons twigged that they had one too many prisoners. The commandant of the camp subsequently addressed the PoWs in his fractured English. ‘You think we Germans know f*** nothing’, he told them. ‘But in fact’, he went on confidently, ‘we know f*** all.’ It took some time to restore order. Worsley’s portraits of his fellow prisoners, such as that of Lieutenant Godfrey Place, VC, are dignified and penetrating despite the lack of materials forcing the artist to paint on bed sheets. After repatriation, Worsely established a studio at Barons Court in London. He became a prolific artist and found illustration work on the Eagle comic soon after its launch, painting a full-page advertising/ adventure strip for Walls ice cream, starring Tommy Walls, a lad whose heroics were always accomplished by the Lucky Walls Sign, and whose reward was, inevitably, lashings of ice cream. Worsley found success drawing the comic strip ‘PC49’ for the Eagle and also worked for the Eagle’s companion paper, Girl, drawing ‘Belle of the Ballet’, beyond that, he turned his talent to an extraordinary range of work. Guy Morgan, a former fellow PoW, immortalised Albert, RN in a play, which, in 1953, became a film starring Anthony Steel as a fictionalised version of Worsley. The artist himself recreated Albert for the movie, and the dummy may be seen in the Royal Naval Museum at Portsmouth. Worsley also created colour illustrations for television readings of children’s stories. In the late 1960s he became the police artist for Scotland Yard, producing more than a thousand sketches of suspects from victims’ descriptions. His facility for capturing a likeness resulted in many arrests. Worsley was best known to the public as a painter of sea scenes and in the 1980s he served as President of the Royal Society of Marine Artists. In later years, he produced for the oil company Esso a series of paintings depicting life on the oilfields in Iraq and America. His wartime sketches were collected in ‘John Worsley’s War’, published in 1993. Many of his paintings and portraits – including those of Field Marshal Montgomery and Admiral Sir John Cunningham – can be seen at the Imperial War Museum and the National Maritime Museum. Worsley died at the age of 81 in 2000.