Robert Alexander Polhill Bevan CBE (15 March 1901 – 20 December 1974) was a significant figure in British communications and advertising during the mid-20th century. He was the second child of the artists Robert Polhill Bevan and Stanisława de Karłowska and was born at the Bevan house, Horsgate, in Cuckfield, Sussex. Education Bevan was educated at The Hall School before entering Westminster School as a King's Scholar in 1913 at the early age of 12. In 1919 he went up to Christ Church, Oxford and read Greats obtaining seconds in Mods and in Finals. Advertising In 1923 he entered the advertising company of S.H. Benson and became, what former colleague R.D. Bloomfield described as, "the personification of the greatest days of English advertising". It was in his time at Bensons that some of the best known advertising campaigns of the 1920s and 1930s were produced. The products advertised included Guinness, Bovril, Johnnie Walker and Colman's Mustard (The Mustard Club). Bevan was behind most of them, and he was still handling the Guinness account in the 1950s when he commissioned John Nash to provide colour illustrations to Happy New Lear (1957). He was behind slogans such as "Guinness is Good for You" and was the inspiration for Mr Ingleby in Dorothy L. Sayers' 1933 thriller Murder Must Advertise. Bobby Bevan was a member of London's 1930s literary set. A particular friend was the novelist Anthony Powell; who presented Bobby with copies of his first four novels, each fully dedicated with "arch and somewhat randy inscriptions". Powell's gift of his first novel, Afternoon Men, bore the inscription "For Bobby, who covers the waterfront, though his eyes are not always watching the sea. Tony." Sailing and wartime He was a passionate sailor and member of the Royal Ocean Racing Club. In 1937 he and a friend, Harold Paton, commissioned a yacht Phryna, which was built by J.Samuel White in Cowes and designed by B. Heckstall-Smith and Wm. McMeek. They had a very successful couple of years racing before the outbreak of the Second World War. For a short period Bevan was director of General Production at the Ministry of Information. Having joined the RNVR in 1937, he was soon on active service. After a spell on HMS Ellington, he was posted as a liaison officer to the French Navy. Following the fall of France, Bevan prevented the scuttling of the Commandant Dominé and