AND IF THE PATIENT DIES...? - an original printed appearance of this cartoon featuring then-Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill and Leader of the Opposition, former Prime Minister Clement Attlee in the 21 May 1952 edition of the magazine Punch, or The London Charivari
London: Punch, 1952. This original printed appearance of a Punch cartoon featuring Winston S. Churchill comes from the personal collection of Gary L. Stiles, author of Churchill in Punch (Unicorn Publishing Group, 2022). His book is the first ever effort to definitively catalog, describe, and contextualize all of the many Punch cartoons featuring Churchill.
This cartoon titled "AND IF THE PATIENT DIES...?" appeared thus on p.613 of the 21 May 1952 issue of Punch. The cartoon is captioned "Both. 'If you take it out, I shall put it back in.'" The artist is Leslie Gilbert Illingworth.
Clement Richard Attlee (1883-1967) and Winston S. Churchill (1874-1965) served as the Prime Ministers of Great Britain from May 1940 to April 1955, spending the entirely of these 15 years either in Government or in Opposition. Attlee was the socialist Labour leader who famously replaced Churchill as Prime Minister in July 1945 and whom Churchill in turn defeated and replaced in October 1951. Churchill and Attlee were diametrically opposed on the issue of nationalization of industry and services. Upon his return to 10 Downing Street, Churchill quickly began to try to reverse much of what Attlee had done in this vein.
Punch or The London Charivari began featuring Churchill cartoons in 1900, when his political career was just beginning. That political career would last two thirds of a century, see him occupy Cabinet office during each of the first six decades of the twentieth century, carry him twice to the premiership and, further still, into the annals of history as a preeminent statesman. And throughout that time, Punch satirized Churchill in cartoons – more than 600 of them, the work of more than 50 different artists.
It was a near-perfect relationship between satirists and subject. That Churchill was distinctive in both persona and physical appearance helped make him easy to caricature. To his persona and appearance he added myriad additional satirical temptations, not just props, like his cigars, siren suits, V-sign, and hats, but also a variety of ancillary avocations and vocations, like polo, painting, brick-laying, and writing. All these were skewered as well.
Some Punch cartoons were laudatory, some critical, and many humorous, like the man himself. Nearly always, Churchill was distinctly recognizable, a larger-than-life character whose presence caricature served only to magnify. Item #007183
Price: $55.00