The latest collection of cartoons by the legendary Ronald “Carl” Giles OBE (29th September 1916 – 27th August 1995) is available today in bookshops.
With 150 cartoons, and captions to give contemporary perspective, Giles 2025 will delight all of those who love his work and collect the annuals.
Often referred to simply as Giles, he was a cartoonist best known for his work for the British newspaper the Daily Express. His life and work is profiled in a short video available through the Britclip channel on YouTube, which includes commentary from Dr Nick Hiley Head of Special Collections & Archives at University of Kent, who runs the the British Cartoon Archive there.
The BCA has an extensive collection contains around 6500 original artworks by Giles, as well as reference files, business and personal correspondence, books, personal papers, studio objects and toys, and more.
Giles cartoon style was a single topical highly detailed panel, usually with a great deal more going on than the single joke. He’s probably best known for his Express “family”, which first appeared in a published cartoon on 5th August 1945, and had enormous popular appeal.
Giles also contributed to Men Only and other publications, drew advertising cartoons for Guinness, Fisons and others, and designed Christmas cards for the RNLI, Royal National Institute for the Deaf and Game Conservancy Research Fund. He was awarded the OBE in 1959.
Giles cited his influences as British humorist and professional cartoonist Bruce Bairnsfather, creator of “Old Bill” and Pont (Graham Laidler), who was noted for his work for Punch in the 1930s. Giles himself directly influenced the style of Jak, Mac and others.
Creating cartoons that often had fascinating sub-plots occurring away from the main focus of the picture, Giles never submitted roughs, observing that “I can’t work that way – I just sit down and draw the thing.”
He also never worked at the Express office in London but sent his drawings in from his home in Ipswich, Suffolk, which allowed him to play games with the newspaper’s editorial staff. The cartoonist Mel Calman, who joined the Daily Express in 1957, and whose work is also archived at the British Cartoon Archive, recalled that a member of staff on the picture desk pored over Giles’ cartoon each night.
“I watched him scanning the drawing very carefully and asked him why he gave it this careful scrutiny,” Calman said the staffer replied, laughing affectionately: “‘Giles once sneaked in a packet of Durex right on the back shelf of one of his crowded shop scenes and since then I check every inch of his cartoons.'”
Giles continued to avoid political caricature, although just occasionally public figures did appear among the stock characters – as in his cartoon on 12th May 1970, which featured the opening of a cartoon exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, and included Harold Wilson and Edward Heath.
He was generally treated with enormous care at the Express, but he was fundamentally shy and could be petulant, threatening resignation on a number of occasions. Lynn Barber, who joined the Sunday Express in 1982, recalled how “editors and picture editors quailed before him and silently endured the thrice-weekly nightmare of getting his work from Ipswich.
“When the trains were delayed they sent a taxi; when Giles was snowed in, they sent a helicopter. His rare trips to London for lunch with the editor were as meticulously planned as a royal visit.”
In 1989, Giles finally parted company with The Daily Express, after the then editor, Nick Lloyd, called his bluff. His cartoons were now being allocated less space in the paper, and Giles came to London for lunch with him. After waiting an hour and a half for Lloyd in a restaurant, Giles was told by a waitress that the meeting had been cancelled. As he later explained, “I just thought, ‘sod this'”, and walked out. He continued working for the Sunday Express until 1991.
Giles claimed to be a Socialist – “a dirty leftist” – supported the trade union movement, and hated Mrs. Thatcher. Yet he was comfortable with the limited horizons of Middle England, and his cartoons did nothing to extend them.
The “Giles Family” was the bizarre fantasy of a working-class household living a comfortable middle-class life, and, as Nicholas Lezard wrote in 1994, “one wonders whether the aspirational, acquisitive working class was as much his creation as Mrs. Thatcher’s.”
After Giles died in a hospital in Ipswich, Suffolk, on 27th August 1995, under his will his entire studio archive and related material from Giles’ home passed to a group of Cartoon Trustees. This material remained in storage until September 2005, when the Trustees transferred the Giles archive to the British Cartoon Archive at the University of Kent.
The Express still publishes a collection of his work annually, the latest available now.
• Giles Annuals by release date on AmazonUK (Affiliate Link)
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John is the founder of downthetubes, launched in 1998. He is a comics and magazine editor, writer, and Press Officer for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He also runs Crucible Comic Press.
Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine and Overkill for Marvel UK, Babylon 5 Magazine, Star Trek Magazine, and its successor, Star Trek Explorer, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics; and has edited several comic collections and graphic novels, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”, and Hancock: The Lad Himself, by Stephen Walsh and Keith Page.
He’s the writer of comics such as Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs”, with Dave Hailwood.
Categories: British Comics, British Comics - Newspaper Strips, Comics, downthetubes Comics News, downthetubes News
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