Commercial artist, illustrator, painter and bibliophile, born in Naetirisch Ostrak, Austria (later Czechoslovakia), into a middle-class but uncultured family. His small stature made him a bookworm, and through a strong character and intelligence he developed knowledge of book collecting and talents for painting and drawing while studying law. When Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia Herz fled without his family to Poland, then England, arriving in 1939. Became a freelance commercial artist, a job he always disliked, although he went on to illustrate many books on Jewish subjects and books for children. From 1947 he joined his lifelong friend V V Rosenfeld in a commercial art business. The work eliminated time for his own painting. In 1945 Herz tried to commit suicide through a drugs overdose, having heard his mother had been murdered by the Nazis.