From cartoons to stage design: the genius of Osbert Lancaster

‘Bigger,’ said Sir Osbert Lancaster when asked the difference between his work for the page and for the stage. ‘Definitely bigger.’ For almost 40 years Lancaster was the ‘pocket cartoonist’ for the Daily Express. He had remarked to the features editor that no English newspaper had anything to match the little column-width cartoons of the French papers. ‘Go on,’ said the editor, ‘give us some.’ On 1 January 1939, Lancaster gave them the first of around 10,000 line-drawn cartoons. His subjects were the war, the Blitz, the weather, Stalin, Hitler and Dr Spock, the Swinging Sixties, the Common Market, the test tube baby and the topless swimsuit. His heroine, his alter ego, was Maudie, Countess of Littlehampton, a wasp-waisted symbol of sanity in an increasingly insane world. In the front-page cartoon of 19 March 1963, we see Maudie in a box at the ballet. A shirtless Nureyev-a-like is performing a grand jeté.