Feliks Topolski was born in Warsaw in 1907. He studied in the Warsaw Academy of Art, and later worked in Italy and France, moving to Britain in 1935 when commissioned to record King George V's silver jubilee. His studio near Waterloo Station, evolved into a café-bar-gallery featuring his art. Several George Bernard Shaw plays were published with illustrations by Topolski, bringing his work to a wide audience in the UK. During the Second World War, he became an official war artist for both Poland and Britain and painted scenes of the Battle of Britain. He was also under contract to Picture Post magazine, which published many of his drawings. He made a celebrated painting about the first meeting of the United Nations. Topolski painted portraits of contemporaries, including the authors H.G. Wells, Graham Greene, John Mortimer and Evelyn Waugh, and politicians Harold Macmillan and Aneurin Bevan.  He also painted murals, contributed to BBC programmes, such as the caricatures of guests used in Face to Face and designed theatrical sets. Between 1975 and his death he worked on a 600 ft mural in a studio in railway arches near London's South Bank,[4] depicting events and people of the 20th century.