History Society: The Art of the Political Cartoon

Date: Wednesday 28 January 2009

For many years, the political cartoon has been an essential tool in the history teacher's armoury, and examining boards have made increasing use of them in the relatively new 'source-driven' questions so popular with OCR and Edexcel. Tonight we were lucky enough to welcome an expert in this field, Dr Nicholas Hiley from the University of Kent, where he administers their world-renowned cartoon archive.

This turned out to be an absolutely fascinating hour in which Dr Hiley first explained the massive scope of the archive - more than 130,000 pieces of cartoon artwork by over 350 artists - in addition to a website which allows free access to over 120,000 cartoons! What is more, he offered our historians an open invitation to visit the archive, and see current exhibitions and original material.

The majority of his talk concentrated, however, on the constraints which influence the work of cartoonists from editorial expectation, through to the militancy of print workers who might object to the tenor of a cartoon! The final constraint which he focused on was censorship, in the case of postcard artist Donald McGill, and the many prosecutions brought against his work for alleged obscenity!

I, for one, will be looking forward to my visit to the UKC - particularly with access to 'Krokodil'- - Soviet satirical cartoons from the Cold War era.