Illingworth's War in Cartoons: One Hundred of his Greatest Drawings 1939 - 1945

About this book

LESLIE ILLINGWORTH was one of the most distinguished British political cartoonists of the 20th century and remains for many the cartoonists cartoonist. Yet though his career spanned more than 50 years longer than either of his great contemporaries Sir David Low and Vicky very little has been published about his life and works. Some of Illingworths best cartoons were published for the Daily Mail during the Second World War (examples were even found in Hitlers bunker) and this book collects together for the first time 100 of his greatest to mark the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of the conflict. Illingworth joined the Daily Mail soon after the war started and remained with the paper for 30 years. A superb draughtsman and an acute political commentator he also drew weekly for Punch for two decades. The magazines editor Malcolm Muggeridge even felt that his cartoons were better than Lows: Illingworths go deeper becoming at their best satire in the grand style rather than mischievous quips. A student under Sir William Rothenstein at the Royal College of Art during one of its most brilliant periods fellow students included Barbara Hepworth Henry Moore and Eric Ravilious he left to become full-time political cartoonist on Wales national paper the Western Mail at the age of only 19. A founding member and the first President of the British Cartoonists Association in 1966 he was made an Honorary Doctor of Literature by the University of Kent in 1975. In addition he drew for American publications including a famous cover for Time magazine and was officially presented to US President L.B. Johnson in 1968. This unique collection is divided into chapters covering the war year-by-year and the book draws extensively on archive material held at the National Library of Wales and only recently catalogued in association with the British Cartoon Archive at the University of Kent. It also contains the first biography of Illingworth based on unique access to hitherto unavailable family records.