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The Prime Ministers: An Irreverant Political History in Cartoons
The two and a half centuries since Sir Robert Walpole was opprobriously dubbed ‘Prime Minister’ as a caustic reminder of the corrupt concentration of patronage in one man's hands embrace a great, captivating swathe of British history. Here all human vices - as well as some of the virtues - are displayed. Here, too, as the Prime Minister becomes the symbol of the government and often - but not always - the centre of power, we can watch from centre stage the great issues of modern times.
Kenneth Baker has chosen to tell this enthralling story from a particular perspective: through the eyes of the cartoonist. Satirical commentary, first in the form of individual prints, later within newssheets, newspapers and magazines, has always been a mirror image of its age. In the 18th century, images of politicians spitting, defecating, fornicating, or gorging themselves on the fruits of office were the norm. In the Victorian age, personal vindictiveness gave way to a gentler analysis of political questions, while our own century has seen a mixture of approaches, in which the savage figures of Scarfe and Steadman in the 1960s seemed to presage a longer-term return to something of the coarseness and cruelty of the era of Walpole and his successors.
What emerges from this history, which combines the author's masterly inside view of our political life with over 200 marvellous or rare illustrations? Cartoonists are acute in their political judgments. Balfour is memorialised as a wilting question mark, Eden as a sheep in wolf's clothing. But the greatest of Prime Ministers, the elder Pitt, Churchill, Thatcher have not only been the most frequently caricatured, but have also turned the attacks on themselves into strengths. After all, who laughed loudest when an Iron Lady, who wore the trousers and made no U-turns, won not one but three successive elections?
[From the dust jacket]
Kenneth Baker has chosen to tell this enthralling story from a particular perspective: through the eyes of the cartoonist. Satirical commentary, first in the form of individual prints, later within newssheets, newspapers and magazines, has always been a mirror image of its age. In the 18th century, images of politicians spitting, defecating, fornicating, or gorging themselves on the fruits of office were the norm. In the Victorian age, personal vindictiveness gave way to a gentler analysis of political questions, while our own century has seen a mixture of approaches, in which the savage figures of Scarfe and Steadman in the 1960s seemed to presage a longer-term return to something of the coarseness and cruelty of the era of Walpole and his successors.
What emerges from this history, which combines the author's masterly inside view of our political life with over 200 marvellous or rare illustrations? Cartoonists are acute in their political judgments. Balfour is memorialised as a wilting question mark, Eden as a sheep in wolf's clothing. But the greatest of Prime Ministers, the elder Pitt, Churchill, Thatcher have not only been the most frequently caricatured, but have also turned the attacks on themselves into strengths. After all, who laughed loudest when an Iron Lady, who wore the trousers and made no U-turns, won not one but three successive elections?
[From the dust jacket]
192 pages, Hardcover
First published September 25, 1995
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