Sunday Mirror National Exhibition of Children’s Art 1970

This is a true story.

In 1970, my Dad persuaded my brother Graham – then aged 8 - to produce a piece of art that he could enter in the Sunday Mirror National Exhibition of Children’s Art, due to be held in London.  Graham produced the picture you see below, using pencil, crayons and felt pens.  A few weeks later, we received a letter telling us that the picture had been selected to be exhibited at the Royal Academy in The Strand.  We went to see the picture there of course, but didn’t receive the expected letter afterward, telling us that we could collect it from the Sunday Mirror building in Fleet Street.

Fast forward to May, 2023.  Myself, Mary and our sister and brother in law Louise and Steve hired a power boat for a day’s outing from Weymouth to celebrate two birthdays.  We were also on a mission to fulfil Graham’s final request – to scatter his ashes over water, which we finally accomplished some 4 years after his passing (Covid restrictions having frustrated several earlier attempts).  We said a few words in memoriam and returned home.  Three days later, I received an email from Bill and Liz Hagerty.  Bill is a former deputy editor of the Sunday Mirror, Daily Mirror and editor of the Sunday People.  This is the email in full.

Dear Mr Russell Lawrence

I hope you do not mind me contacting you about your late brother, Graham. Please may I explain: Graham was one of the children (he was then aged eight) who entered artwork for a Sunday Mirror children’s exhibition in 1970. I was at the time Features Editor of the Daily Mirror and one evening was leaving the publishing group’s head offices in Holborn Circus when I spent some time looked at the exhibits. I very much liked what turned out to be Graham’s picture and asked the curator what happened to the pieces when the exhibition closed. He told me they were returned to the young artists, unless for any reason they and/or their parents did not want them back. When the exhibition closed, I was advised by the same curator that this was the case with Graham’s picture and asked if I would like it. For more years than I can now remember, the picture adorned the wall of my home in West London. Like me, my children admired ‘At the Match’, but when eventually we moved house to a smaller one, I discovered there was not enough wall space to continue hanging it. The home details of Graham were on the back of the picture, so I telephoned and spoke with Graham’s (and, I assume, your) mother to ask if the artist, no longer a child, would like to have it (I think I offered to return it to your family home). Sadly, I felt, she declined, citing health problems that your brother had suffered. Two houses later, a great deal of the contents were put into store. Which is where the picture remained until this Spring, when to my delight it reappeared when we were clearing some of the storage contents.

I like it as much as I ever did but there is no wall space for it here at home. More importantly, I still feel that the picture and Graham belong to one another, even though, as we subsequently discovered from your website, Graham is no longer with us.

Sorry this note is so long, but I am hoping that you or someone else from your family would like to have ‘At the Match’ as a memento of a boy who had such talent when only eight and for whom life was too short and, perhaps, not especially kind.

I hope your family would like to reclaim what I have always considered to be Graham’s own vibrant picture. If not, I can promise only that it will never go to a home where it is not loved.

Thank you. My contact details – and the picture – are below.

Bill Hagerty

Chairman emeritus, British Journalism Review

Director, London Press Club

Last weekend, Mary and I went to see Bill and his wife Liz at their cottage in Strand on the Green, Chiswick and collected Graham’s artwork just 53 years late.  We owe a huge debt of gratitude to Bill and Liz for preserving this piece of children's art for half a century.  Here is this amazing survivor, with its original competition entry label.

At The Match (1970)

The entry label from the back of the picture frame.