Stefan Themerson was born on 25 January 1910 in Płock, in what was then part of Congress Poland within the Russian Empire, and died in London on 6 September 1988.

During the First World War Dr. Themerson served as a medical officer in the Tsar's army and the family lived in Riga, St. Petersburg and Velikiye Luki.

After a year, he transferred to the Warsaw Polytechnic to take up architecture, but spent most of his time working on photography, collage and film-making.

Stefan contributed articles to various periodicals and prose and verse to school textbooks and wrote at least ten books for children which Franciszka illustrated.

[2] All except Przygoda Człowieka Poczciwego, which remained in Warsaw, were lost in Paris in the Second World War, but the script for Europa, based on a poem by Anatol Stern was later published by the Themersons' Gaberbocchus Press, illustrated by surviving stills from the film and Apteka and Drobiazg melodyjny were remade by Bruce Checefsky from descriptions of them when they first appeared, stills and storyboards.

Themerson wrote for various Polish publications in Paris; Franciszka started to paint, and illustrated children's books for Flammarion.

With the declaration of war in 1939, the Themersons both enlisted, Stefan joined the Polish Army in the West forming in France after the German and Soviet invasions and partition of Poland.

Themerson travelled inside France, first returning (on foot) to occupied Paris, then on to Toulouse, where, through the Polish Red Cross, he re-established contact with Franciszka.

She had been working for the Polish Government in Exile as a cartographer in Paris and Normandy and had subsequently escaped to London on a troopship from Bayonne.

Here he began writing Professor Mmaa's Lecture in Polish and wrote the long poem in French Croquis dans les Ténèbres (Sketches in Darkness).

Towards the end of 1942 Themerson got across France via Marseille and Spain to Lisbon whence he was flown to Britain by the R.A.F., rejoining his wife and re-enlisting in the Polish army.

He spent time with the army in Scotland, where he finished Professor Mmaa, and then was sent to join the film unit of the Polish Ministry of Information and Documentation in London.

There he and Franciszka, commissioned by the Polish Ministry of Information and Documentation, made two further short films, Calling Mr. Smith, an account of Nazi atrocities in Poland and The Eye and the Ear, inspired by four Julian Tuwim songs set to music by Szymanowski.

Their list of some 70 titles included works by Guillaume Apollinaire, Jankel Adler and Kurt Schwitters, the first English translation of Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi, Raymond Queneau's Exercises in Style and The Good Citizen's Alphabet by Bertrand Russell.