In 1956 I joined other new kids on the block at Punch magazine: Quentin Blake, Ed McLachlan, Mike Williams, Honeysett, Ray Lowry, Ken Pyne, Bill Tidy, Pav, Petty, plus Gerald Scarfe and Ralph Steadman who were going to blow the world apart with their blood-and-guts drawings. While Punch’s pages were curling at the edges, up popped Private Eye — naughty, rude, fearless and funny. Punch took a mortal blow from which it never recovered.
People said that Punch had ceased to be funny, but this simply wasn’t true, as the cartoons collected here demonstrate. Cartoonists then had room to stretch themselves and put into their drawings details of the surroundings and attitudes of the period. Look at the amazing Pont (Graham Laidler) and see how he captured the Thirties. I would say that apart from being funny, he was one of the greatest artists we ever had.
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