How I covered the last 14 years of Tory government as i’s political cartoonist

's illustrator-in-chief reflects on how we got here, ahead of a new exhibition of his workfor the entirety of its 14 years in office, which looks likely to be ending very soon. Considering how many prime ministers, chancellors and health secretaries we’ve had in that time, along with seismic events such as the

Throughout this period, as we’ve hopped from one catastrophe to another, people would often say to me, “Oh, this must be great material for you!” to which I will usually reply with some waffle about the paradox faced by those in my profession. We can despair as citizens at the state of the nation but be brimming with ideas as cartoonists.

But another issue for us topical scribblers has been how on earth to react when things have been too ridiculous. Where do you start when satirical metaphors have become our lived experience –One solution is to recycle works from the past and give them a contemporary twist. Paying homage to old masters by hijacking their visuals or themes to create something new. This is essentially what I have done in my upcoming exhibition,, and Hogarth is often considered its grandfather.

They tend to follow a character through various scenes that form a social commentary on the times in which Hogarth lived., which tells the story of Thomas Rakewell – the name being a play on the term “rake”, meaning a dissolute male. Thomas inherits great wealth but squanders it all and ends up in Bedlam asylum.However, despite all the moralising, Hogarth’s pictures can also be incredibly funny, filled with incidental dark-humoured gags that can be found scattered around the scenes.

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