'Nothing to touch the glory of the great cartoonists!...they teach the historians their trade' said the former Labour Party leader Michael Foot, a view also held by Winston Churchill. However, though many of the cartoons of international conflicts from the beginning of the Napoleonic Wars until the end of the Second World War have become iconic, very little is known about their creators. This book puts the record straight by assembling, for the first time in a single volume, brief biographies of 300 of the most significant international artists of the past two centuries who drew political cartoons and caricatures during wartime, not only in national newspapers and magazines but also in posters, prints and books. Artists from more than 30 countries - and working on both sides of the wars concerned - have been included, from Russia, Germany, Poland, Japan, Italy, Australia and Brazil to Czechoslovakia, Holland, Norway, Switzerland, France, the USA and Great Britain.
Some of the names may be familiar - such as James Gillray, John Tenniel, Louis Raemaekers, David Low, Boris Efimov and Bill Mauldin - but many others appear here for the first time after decades of omission from histories of art and warfare. It covers conflicts that include the Napoleonic Wars, Crimean War, Indian Mutiny, Opium Wars, Ashanti Wars, Zulu War, Afghan Wars, Wars in the Sudan, Boer War, Russian Revolution, Russo-Japanese War, Franco-Prussian War, First World War, Spanish Civil War and Second World War. Lavishly illustrated with more than 300 classic war cartoons in colour and black-and-white, as well as portraits and self-portraits of the artists themselves, this essential sourcebook also contains an introductory essay on the history of the political cartoonist in wartime.