Imagine for a moment that your name became so famous around the world that it actually entered the dictionary as an adjective! What would be the definition, do you think? 

That’s easy. Ed would mean ‘blisteringly intelligent, erudite and hilarious’ Ed

Of all the artists who have ever lived, only a tiny handful have become household names, and even fewer have actually entered the English language. William Heath Robinson (1872-1944) earned his living as an artist and illustrator. His unique talent for drawing humorous contraptions led to his surname entering English dictionaries in 1912, as an adjective. A Heath Robinson is a machine that is ‘ingeniously or ridiculously over-complicated in design or construction’

When Heath Robinson chose art as a career it must have come as no surprise. Both his brothers were accomplished painters and so was his father and grandfather before him. William studied at the Islington School or Art and the Painting School of the Royal Academy. At the age of 25, he realised that selling one landscape painting a year would not be profitable, but he could make a good living from the type of drawings and illustrations that were being published in the rapidly growing publishing industry. He went on to illustrate the Danish fairy tales and legends of Hans Christian Andersen, The Pilgrim’s Progress, by John Bunyan, Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes and Homer’s The Iliad and The Odyssey. Heath Robinson’s first funny drawings appeared in magazines like The Tatler, The Bystander and The Sketch.