Timothy Birdsall - the greatest cartoonist you’ve never heard of

Few people under the age of 65 will have heard of the cartoonist Timothy Birdsall, who died 50 years ago on 10 June 1963, having produced his finest work in the last months of his life here in The Spectator and in Private Eye. But had his career not been cut cruelly short by leukaemia at the age of only 27, he would today be revered as one of the outstanding cartoonists of our time.

Tim was part of that talented late-1950s Cambridge generation, along with a galaxy of others later to become famous, from Peter Cook to Ian McKellen. On coming down in 1960 he was employed to do pocket cartoons for the Sunday Times, in the tradition that has led from Osbert Lancaster to Matt. But it was in his final months that his career blossomed, first when in August 1962 he joined The Spectator, where his cartooning suddenly took on a wholly new depth and power; then when, that winter, he became a nationally known figure with his quirkily original weekly slot on the BBC’s groundbreaking satire show That Was the Week that Was.