Churchill in Cartoons: Satirizing a Statesman

By: Alexander Larman / The Daily Telegraph
Translation: Telegrafi.com

In 1932, Winston Churchill wrote the essay Cartoons and cartoonists, where he stated: "Caricaturists really do have a lot of power. Caricatures are the regular food on which the grown-up children of the present day are fed ... By them they often form their opinions of public men, and ... often vote according to them."

Although he was still eight years away from taking the post of prime minister, the politician and writer knew the cartoon category very well. In the same essay, he wrote: “How would you like to be caricatured? Would you like to know that millions of people always see you in the funniest situations? Would you like to know that millions of people think of you that way?

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The Museum's fascinating and delightful new War Empires exhibition on Churchill in caricature form does not attempt to engage in the irritating and currently popular criticism of his reputation. Rather, this cleverly executed selection begins with the 1909 appearance in the magazine Punch, of the 34-year-old Churchill – then a Liberal MP – being held in abeyance by his triumphant colleagues after the House of Lords rejected the "People's Budget", while ending with a Peter Schrank cartoon from 2003 in which Churchill, in cenotaph form, stares sternly at Tony Blair in his stetson hat and rightly asks: "So it's not the beginning of the end either"?

Between these years there is a balanced and consistently surprising selection of Churchillian cartoons, ranging from the generally supportive and approving efforts of British and American cartoonists portraying Winston at the height of World War II, to some truly outrageous works of propaganda by Axis depicting him as a warmongering dictator: a useful reminder that visual representations of an enemy leader, during the war, were just as savage from the opposing side as Hitler caricatures in Britain.

Some of the British images may strike a contemporary viewer as bland and servile. Ernest “EH” Shepard is rightly credited for his illustrations of the work Wine-Well [Winnie the Pooh], but his cartoons of Churchill included here, such as the November 1938 one showing him being visited by his predecessor, the Duke of Marlboro, then another after he became Prime Minister in 1940, as well as St George killing dragon in 1941, are naive and somewhat shy.

Much more interesting are the cartoons by cartoonist i Punch, Leslie Illingworth, which begin traditionally with cigars and raised fingers, while ending with a somber scene from February 1954: "Then the man goes out to work and works till evening," depicting an elderly Churchill and sad. The subject was offended, saying that "there is malice in him," but it may not have been a coincidence that he resigned as prime minister the following year, exhausted by health problems.

The exhibition is compact, but each image has its own story. You leave educated and inspired, remembering the words of the famous Churchill cartoonist, David Low: “Churchill is far from the best actor; he is the most prominent and sketchy figure in British public life." This was said in 1926; it was just as true decades later. /Telegraph/