Nicolas Bentley was a man of many parts--publisher, circus clown, film extra, novelist, mimic, journalist, fireman, poet, ad man, and commercial artist. The godson of G.K. Chesterton, he became one of Britain's best-loved humorous cartoonists and caricaturists. Among the seventy-odd books that still carry the immortal by-line "Nicolas Bentley Drew the Pictures" are works by Hilaire Belloc, Damon Runyon, Lawrence Durrell, Kingsley Amis, and most famously,...