A flair for ryhmes

Readers may be interested to learn more about the Bill Powrie, mentioned in yesterday’s column. Magic editor Bill Powrie was born William Shanks Powrie in Dundee in 1916.

He attended Harris Academy and joined DC Thomson’s immediately from school as the youngest sub-editor on the boy’s paper Rover, in July 1933. He fell under the mentoring hand of the paper’s editor, and soon the managing editor of all Thomson’s juvenile publications, R.D. Low.

Within three years he was not only a chief-sub on the Rover but also the first editor of the Sunday Post Fun Section. Then, after a spell as a sub-editor on The Dandy in 1938 prepared him for the role, he was given the editorship of his own comic title – the Magic – in July 1939, his flair for constructing comic rhymes perfectly suiting him for the paper’s nursery style.

Bill Powrie remained editor of both the Magic comic and the Sunday Post Fun Section until April 1940, when he enlisted in the Scot’s Guards having just completed putting together the first Oor Wullie book.

“He joined the 1st Battalion Royal Scots Fusiliers in June 1941 and, while waiting to be posted overseas, he married his wife May. Tragically, during the first amphibious assault undertaken by Commonwealth Forces in the Second World War, Bill was killed by machine gun fire while attempting to help create a beach head on the morning of May 6 1942. He was 26 years old.

“He was laid to rest in Diego Suarez War Cemetery and lies there still along with 313 other Commonwealth servicemen who died that day.”