Bart was born Lionel Begleiter the youngest of seven surviving children in East London to Galician Jews, and grew up in Stepney. His father worked as a tailor in a garden shed in London E1. The family had escaped the pogroms in Galicia which was then part of the Austrian Empire. Lionel later changed his name to Bart derived from the name of the silk screen printing firm he and John Gorman[1] created ("G & B Arts", for Gorman and Begleiter) after he had completed his National Service with the Royal Air Force.

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