Tom Karen OBE b.1926
IT IS HARD to imagine that any designer can claim more touchpoints with British children of the 1970s and ’80s than the late, great Tom Karen. Whether it was the unstable bright orange three-wheeler for which he is most famed, the bicycle that bewitched a generation despite its genital-crushing tendencies, or a simple self-build marble game, this Austrian émigré bestrode those decades like a colossus.
Born in Vienna, he came to the UK when his family fled Austria in
