The business of cartooning is in a pretty perilous state now that we have lost the captain of the ship. Ronald Searle was a cartoonist who could also draw — a rare thing. After the war, he became famous for a series of drawings he did for ‘Lilliput’ called St Trinian’s. The girls Searle created
I was born in London in 1935. By the summer of 1939, it was considered wise to get children out of the city before the war started. I wasn’t separated from my sobbing mother at Victoria station and put on a train holding a gas mask. Instead, my mother and I went down to Devon
From the latest issue of the Spectator:
Here is a collection of some of The Spectator’s best cartoons from the last decade, put together to take your mind off the humourless PC world we are now trapped in. Some people say they only read The Spectator for the cartoons. Who am I to argue? Here is a collection of some of The
Are you staggered and amazed by today’s sleight-of-hand merchants? Are you staggered and amazed by today’s sleight-of-hand merchants? Perhaps David Blaine surviving in a block of solid ice for months leaves you cold? Or Darren Brown knowing your credit card number has you stifling a yawn? If something is missing from today’s masters of magic
The restaurant-wrecker A.A. Gill has attacked the Spectator, accusing our cartoons (and those of the New Yorker) of failing to make him laugh. Well, you can go for me, A.A. – but when you go for my cartoonists, I’m bound to react (see above). Next time pick on someone your own size, beach bully!
In 1956 I joined other new kids on the block at Punch magazine: Quentin Blake, Ed McLachlan, Mike Williams, Honeysett, Ray Lowry, Ken Pyne, Bill Tidy, Pav, Petty, plus Gerald Scarfe and Ralph Steadman who were going to blow the world apart with their blood-and-guts drawings. While Punch’s pages were curling at the edges, up
Alan Coren, who has just died after a long illness, was one of the finest comic writers of the past 40 years. He was very, very funny. That’s rare. I’d known him since he became editor of Punch in 1978. He was an inspiring editor, and good company. And he wasn’t just a great comic
At home I work in a cupboard under the stairs just to keep me grounded, so you won’t hear me talking about my ‘studio’ — unlike some cartoonists I could name. My cupboard has in it, apart from old clothes, a cat litter tray and a collection of hundreds of jazz CDs. Do I put
I see that the papers have finally given a name — ‘chavs’ — to the new working class. They are the type of people I have been drawing for years: trailer trash covered in bling bling, wearing Burberry baseball hats, white tracksuit bottoms and white trainers. They couldn’t be more different from the docile ‘pint-of-mild-please’
Did you have a nice holiday? I know I did. Did you find yourself in a hotel bedroom in Naples looking after four children between the ages of two and six? Two girls and two boys, while everyone else went sightseeing. (‘Look! There’s a boy stealing that lady’s Prada handbag!’) The two girls have me
This is the first Christmas in recent years that I haven’t spent in traction or immobilised by glandular fever. You may imagine that I spend my days drawing and whistling in a carefree manner, but there are tears behind the laughter. Two Christmases ago I was invited to the Erotic Review party in a club