Jane Sullivan wrote in 1997: In his 70s Horner became profoundly deaf and was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, but while this curtailed his capacity to draw and compelled him to retire, he was writing letters to the Age as late as 1993, when he detailed the kind concern and care of passers-by who attended to him when he collapsed at North Brighton station.
Colonel Hugo Albion Pewter[19] was only one of a large number of characters, some constant and others temporary, in a strip which was designed to appeal to both children and adults.
An episodic, yet light-hearted, feature in which storylines tended to run across three months, it focused on the adventures of the Colonel and his great-nephew, Martin, a boy of around ten, who live in a mansion, 'Chukkas', in Much Overdun, Whimshire.
Other characters included Martin's cat, Chloe, intelligent yet non-verbal; the housekeeper, Mrs. Aspic; an 'Upper Palaeolithic' butler, Glub, and a 'space dog cross', Sirius.
Horner mused in 1959 that "Pewter began as a harmless pottering eccentric but as time went on a kind of cussedness broke through and he developed more complex characteristics… His social background has grown to be full of oddity that accumulates like flotsam.
"[20] Ian C. Thomas has compiled a list of 54 Colonel Pewter adventures,[21] including a final one much later than the original continuity: Horner briefly revived the strip in 1977 for a new story set in Australia, "The Pukka Ashes".