In 1948 he employed young artist Frank Hampson, a war veteran who had enrolled at the Southport School of Arts and Crafts, where he was described by his tutor as an "outstanding draughtsman 'prepared to go to endless trouble to get a thing right. He worked as the illustrator on "Anvil", and later became the full-time artist for Interim, a Christian publicity society formed during a conference of diocesan editors, with ambitions to produce a strip cartoon magazine aimed at children.