Giles

For more than fifty years, Carl Giles chronicled British life with warmth, mischief and an unrivalled eye for detail. His intricately drawn cartoons covered everything from royal weddings and elections to international crises and family holidays, while the formidable Grandma and the rest of the Giles Family became national institutions.

But Giles’s readers did more than laugh. They examined every inch of his drawings, writing to point out mistakes, question obscure details, complain when he went too far and congratulate him when he got things exactly right. Giles frequently answered them, sometimes apologising, sometimes defending himself and often responding with another joke or drawing.

Bringing together cartoons spanning more than five decades alongside readers’ letters, Giles’s replies and previously unseen correspondence, Giles: The Worlds Funniest Cartoonist reveals this remarkable conversation between cartoonist and audience. From wartime Britain and the Coronation to the Cold War, the Falklands and the changing social landscape of the 1980s, the result is both a celebration of a great comic artist and an affectionate, revealing portrait of Britain as seen by Giles – and by the millions of readers who kept him on his toes.