Watercolourist and black-and-white illustrator, born in Heacham, Norfolk, into a family with a long medical tradition. He was educated at Harrow School, where he showed a talent for art, caricaturing the masters. His father, a Harley Street physician, reluctantly let Goodall be “trained to be a mid-Victorian art student” under Arthur Cope and John Watson Nicol, later with the noted draughtsman Harold Speed and at the Royal Academy Schools, 1925–9. There he met his future wife, Margaret Nicol. Began as a fortnightly contributor to Radio Times and went on to illustrate for periodicals such as Bystander, titles by E Nesbit and Miss Read and a series of his own books with Victorian and Edwardian settings. Because these contained no words beyond the title-page, children could make up their own story, and they were readily marketable overseas.