Chris Riddell's Nerve Centre. Copyright: Chris Riddell/the Observer

Former national newspaper editor, Peter Preston asked four of the UK’s top political cartoonists how they draw Nick Clegg, the new Deputy Prime Minister and leader of the Liberal Democrats in a recent article.

Preston asked Peter Brookes from The Times:

Clegg is very much the junior partner while Cameron has that air of entitlement about him. So the idea of Cameron as a prefect and Clegg as his fag seemed a theme that is infinitely playable on.

The Guardian‘s Steve Bell took a similar line:

After the election, I came across graffiti on a poster. It was one of Cameron’s posters, with him in his shirtsleeves. Somebody had written: ‘You’re my butler now’ and it just made me laugh. The world is Cameron’s butler now.

Nick Garland of the Daily Telegraph preferred to play on Clegg’s ‘boyish’ qualities:

You can imagine his mother wiping dirt off his shirt. That was noticeable in their press conference in Downing Street’s garden.

…and finally, there was a short video interview with the Observer‘s own Chris Riddell.

[...] his political position makes him an absolute gift, because of his status in this coalition. So week after week, we do Clegg as a lapdog, a ventriloquist’s dummy.

Diana Willis, a founder member of the organisation which set up the UK Cartoon Museum has died, aged 83.

John Jensen writes:

Diana was a daughter of the great cartoonist, H.M.Bateman and although not an artist she, through her father’s work, acquired a love and respect for cartooning. During the 1980s worked with Mel Calman, Simon Heneage and the other Members of the Cartoon Art Trust towards the formation of the UK Cartoon Museum.

Happily, the opening of the museum in her lifetime validated her enduring enthusiasm for the art.

Diana was a country woman. She loved tending her chickens, growing things: apples, figs, berries, vegetables, herbs. She was middle-class but totally without snobbery and full of quiet adventure. She once took one of her sons to a circus – the boy was 12 – and she volunteered to ride bareback. She was fitted with a harness (as always happens when a member of the audience rides bareback) the horse began its run, the harness was pulled and Diana hung in the air until the circuit was complete and she was returned to the horse’s back. This was the sort of action which a twelve year might remember for life with a mixture of pleasure and alarm.

When I was researching my book of H.M.Bateman drawings Diana revealed the family collection of originals, of rough sketches, of sketchbooks, watercolours and caricatures stored in one of Greenham Barton’s many rooms. This, around the early 1970s, was the beginning of a family friendship in which I came to love and respect Diana’s down-to-earth personality, her ability to produce wonderful food from her old-fashioned Aga and to admire the strength of her character. In company with many, many others, I am grateful that I knew her.

On Monday July 12 a Thanksgiving Service was held in Greenham church, a church so tiny that many relatives and friends could not all fit inside. Typically, Diana’s choice of music to follow the Blessing was The Padstow Lifeboat by Malcolm Arnold: a lively exit from the church.

Bloghorn thanks John for the words.