POLITICAL PRE-VIEW - an original printed appearance of this cartoon featuring then-Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill in the 30 March 1955 edition of the magazine Punch, or The London Charivari
London: Punch, 1955. 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 "POLITICAL PRE-VIEW" appeared thus on p.389 of the 30 March 1955 issue of Punch. The artist is Leslie Gilbert Illingworth. The cartoon was published just days before Churchill resigned his second and final premiership on 5 April 1955.
Aneurin Bevan took the lead in opposing Prime Minster Churchill and Labour moderates support for testing nuclear weapons, especially in cooperation with America. In March, as "Operation Grapple" prepared to test Britain's first hydrogen bomb, Bevan led a revolt of 57 Labour MPs who abstained on a key vote. The Labour Party (under Attlee) had introduced a bill to not support the Government's Defence White Paper and so, by abstaining from the vote, Bevan and his Labour colleagues were undermining Attlee.
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 #007202
Price: $65.00