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Stephen Hood "Dick" Lewis was born in Chingford, Essex on 14 June 1916, the son of Jack Lewis, a freelance writer who wrote for the Sexton Blake Library and other Amalgamated Press titles. His uncle Bob Lewis was editor of AP magazines Home Companion and The Family Journal. On leaving school at the age of 17 in 1933, Dick joined the AP as a sub-editor on Stan Gooch's group of comics. The following year, aged only 18, he was appointed editor of a new title, Tip Top, and remained its editor until it folded 20 years later.

His asthma meant he did not serve in the Second World War. During the war years he and his father wrote a six-part film serial, The Mystery of the Snakeskin Belt, produced by the Children's Film Foundation, and a detective strip, Mick Mace, for the Sporting Record.

After the cancellation of Tip Top in 1954, Lewis became editor of Rainbow, and later of the Radio Fun and TV Fun annuals. In the late 1950s he went freelance and sold love stories to George Newnes' Mirabelle among others. He took an editorial job with Newnes, which was amalgamated into IPC in 1961. He became script editor of Valentine until it closed in the late 1970s, after which he edited Whizzer and Chips until he retired in 1981. He died in Redbridge, Essex, in the fourth quarter of 1996.

References[]

  • Alan Clark, Dictionary of British Comic Artists, Writers and Editors, The British Library, 1998, p. 94
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