Cover for Martin Rowson's Tristram Shandy re-issue

Shy and retiring soul that he is, The Guardian’s own Martin Rowson would blanch at the thought that Bloghorn would puff his upcoming talk at the London Literature Festival on 3rd July, but we feel it’s our duty as he is a fellow PCO member.

The subject at hand is the reissue of his graphic-novelisation of Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy – a monumental, rambling, discursive life of “gentleman” Shandy, first published in 1759 and often called the first “modern” novel. This promises to be fun, as Rowson himself was designed for the Rabelaisian environs of Georgian London in which the novel is set.

Martin is a veteran apologist for all things Georgian London, but primarily his heroes, Hogarth and Gillray. You can see the Hogarth advocate at work here in this short film. London is so ingrained in his DNA, that the Caligulan court of Red Ken bestowed the official title of London Cartoonist Laureate on him, before Boris installed some Victorian parsimony back into City Hall.

Rowson tells Bloghorn that the evening promises “an impossible talk about the impossibility of producing a graphic novelisation of a novel about the impossibility of writing a novel”. So there. His talks are always lively and interesting, although Bloghorn recommends not bringing one’s maiden aunt as the language can sometimes be somewhat, er, Georgian. Tickets can be purchased here.

You can watch BBC Four’s take on the theme of Rude Britannia, which ties in with the exhibition of the same name at Tate Britain, just click the picture.

The documentary is one hour long. Parts two and three can be seen tonight and tomorrow night on BBC Four or on the iPlayer.

The exhibition features artwork from New Humanist magazine, which is published by the Rationalist Association.

Many items were sold for quite impressive sums, with the artwork for Rowson’s meeting of Richard Dawkins and God, above, and for his “God Trumps” series – Top Trumps-style cards on world religions – being particularly fought over. Radio presenter and New Humanist writer Laurie Taylor was auctioneer.

The show runs at the Menier Gallery in Southwark, London, until Saturday (June 12) and many items are still for sale. Admission is free. More details here.

And, don’t miss … You have until June 18 to see the show Alex in Love at the Last Tuesday Society in Hackney. Your correspondent saw this last week and it is very much recommended.

If you’re not a regular Alex reader– perhaps you have no interest in City matters – fear not because the strips, as the title suggests, are all about love, sex and relationships. And they are very funny.

The exhibition is free, but if you pay £1 you can also get access to the Last Tuesday Society’s “museum of curiosity”, a chance to see shrunken heads, some creepy taxidermy and all manner of bizarre artworks. Not for the faint of heart.

June looks like being a great month for cartoon shows, with three new exhibitions opening in London.

The big one is Rude Britannia which sees cartoons being let loose in a gallery for “proper art”, namely Tate Britain. It opens on June 9 and runs until September 5.

The exhibition explores British comic art from the 1600s to the present day and puts cartoons alongside a wide array of rude paintings, sculptures, film and photography. Ooer missus, there’s more here.

Then there’s Creations in Bad Faith, a selection of cartoons from New Humanist magazine by PCOer Martin Rowson which is at the Menier Gallery in Southwark from 8-12 June. More details here.

Opening on June 18 is Ray Lowry: London Calling, at the Idea Generation gallery in Shoreditch, which pays tribute to the cartoonist who died last October. Lowry drew for Punch, Private Eye and the NME, and was known as the rock ‘n’ roll cartoonist.

He created the iconic artwork for the Clash album London Calling, and alongside a look at his back catalogue the exhibition will feature contributions from 30 artists paying tribute to that. More details here.

Bloghorn will have more on these shows as they happen. In the meantime, Martin Rowson can be seen talking cartoons with Laurie Taylor on In Confidence tomorrow (June 1) at 10pm on the Sky Arts channel.

UPDATE: Here’s a summer cartoon show we missed: Alex in Love

Alex Hughes reports.

You may have not noticed, but there’s been a general election in Britian recently. And a general election means it’s open season for the political cartoonists, so here Bloghorn presents a brief summary of the events of the last month or so in cartoon form, starting at the beginning of the election with Dave Brown of the Independent on the runners and riders and the Guardian’s Martin Rowson on the approaching media obsession.
During the campaign The Guardian’s Steve Bell talks about drawing at the manifesto launches, the Sky debate, and drawing Nick Clegg, Peter Mandelson and David Cameron (and the cartoon that came from this).

The TV debates may have changed the direction of the election, but they were seen differently by Tim Sanders in the Independent, Dave Brown, Peter Brookes of the Times, Steve Bell and Paul Thomas of the Daily Expesss,whilst Morten Morland of the Times produced a series of short animated responses to each of the debates (ITV, Sky, BBC).

The debates lead to widespread Cleggmania as seen by Stephen Collins in Prospect, Matt in the Daily Telegraph, Martin Rowson and Paul Thomas, and the inevitable media backlash as satirised by Peter Brookes and Dave Brown.

Gordon Brown made what was probably the biggest political gaffe of the campaign by calling a member of the public a “bigoted woman”; Peter Brookes, and Dave Brown, Mac of the Daily Mail, Paul Thomas provided their own takes on Bigotgate.

The election night itself inspired Tim Sanders and Matt, but as we now know it resulted in a hung parliament, as shown variously the Sun’s Andy Davey, Dave Brown, Matt, Peter Brookes, Paul Thomas and Mac (and even a hung parliament themed game), Gordon Brown’s departure as seen by Nick Garland and eventually the Con-Lib coalition Christian Adams, Tim Sanders, Morten Morland and Martin Rowson.

Looking forward to the challenges for the new Government were Harry Venning’s Clare in the Community and Kal in the Economist, and looking back, Bloghorn’s very own Matt Buck produced a series of  weekly despatches for the Guardian from the 1710 campaign as seen by Tobias Grubbe (2, 3, 4, 5).  The Times produced a 9 page comic summary of the election campaign available for download here (PDF, 7Mb).

(“Keep Calm and Cameron” cartoon by Nathan Ariss).

The Editor adds: We are bound to have missed many other great examples of cartooning so please do feel free to add things you have seen in the comments. Thanks.

The market square has been abuzz with crowds who have come to see the cartoonists producing Big Boards, caricatures and “reverse” caricatures, with live bonus as an added bonus.

Political cartoonist Martin Rowson didn’t let a power failure at Birmingham New Street prevent him from attending the festival. He made one taxi driver very happy by getting a cab all the way to Shrewsbury. He gave a talk entitled Giving Offence: The Greatest Gift, the festival’s sole non family-friendly offering.

You can see lots more pictures, taken and tweeted throughout the day, at the Bloghorn Twitter feed.

The 4th Annual Cartoon Show, at the the gallery in St James’s, London, is a selling exhibition which features more than 20 top artists from the past 100 years of cartooning, plus the following three highlights:

In Memoriam. David Levine’s Caricatures: A celebration of the work of the American caricaturist who died last December. The show features more than 40 pieces, including John Updike, Ezra Pound, and Hemingway.

Larry’s Van Gogh Collection: Cartoons about Vincent Van Gogh and his work by Terence Parkes, aka Larry, above, to coincide with the hit show currently at the Royal Academy. A group of ceramic sculptures by Larry will also be on display.

A Year with Matt: A selection of the best works by Matt Pritchett of the Daily Telegraph from the past year, as well as the latest Matt cartoons from the days leading up to and throughout the show.

Other artists on display include contemporary cartoonists such as Peter Brookes, Tony Husband, John Jensen, Ed McLachlan, Nick Newman, Martin Rowson, Mike Williams and Kipper Williams, alongside artists from the past including H.M. Bateman, Giles and Thelwell.

For more details, visit the Chris Beetles Website.

The Festival’s full programme for 22-25 April is now available online and in a downloadable pdf brochure. You will be able to follow coverage of the event here at the Bloghorn and on our Twitter feed.

The festival, now in its seventh year, also enjoys support from long-time patrons Professor Colin Pillinger (the inspiring scientist from the Beagle 2 Mission to Mars) and TV news pundit Andrew Marr.

Highlights of this year’s event include an illustrated talk by one of Britain’s finest political cartoonists, Martin Rowson. His talk ‘Giving Offence – the Greatest Gift’ is at the Old Market Hall, 12.30pm on Saturday 24 April. Tickets are £5 from the Box Office which you can contact at 01743 281281.

Libby Purves presents an evening of conversation and cartoons with cartoonist Bill Stott at The Lion on Thursday 22 April at 7.30pm. Tickets are also £5 from Bear Steps Gallery , telephone 01743 356511

Full details of the many other free events, workshops, talks and cartooning activities are in the brochure linked above or from the official festival website.

Shrewsbury International Cartoon Festival is organised by Shropshire Council, Shrewsbury Civic Society, The Professional Cartoonists’ Organisation, and Agate Design with support from the Arts Council and many volunteers and private sector sponsors. If you would like details of opportunities around this and future festivals you can make contact using the form below.

In 1999 Ronald Searle was judged, by his fellow cartoonists, to be the greatest cartoonist of the 20th Century. It’s a judgement I thoroughly endorse, though as someone who was brought up on Searle, like most people of my generation born in the late 50s and early 60s, I thought distant worship would be as close as I ever got to him. After all, Searle famously scarpered when I was about one, so I, along with other British cartoonists, could only ever venerate him as the King Across the Water.

Still, when I was approached in 2005 to front a BBC4 documentary about Searle, I jumped at the chance, even though he made clear very early on he wanted nothing whatsoever to do the making of the film or anyone involved with it. That’s his prerogative, and my reverence for him includes a deep respect for his desire for a bit of peace and quiet. Nonetheless, the programme went ahead without him, and I enjoyed it for the most part (although, as I’d decided to speak to camera unscripted, to capture a greater sense of immediacy, there were occasions when the demands of the producer that I repeat a line 20 times meant that by the end I kept forgetting it, as well as forgetting what it could possibly mean.)

Part of the gig – part of the reason they’d got me to do it in the first place – was that, when pressed, I can draw a little bit like the master, and I did several pieces to camera sitting at a drawing board and replicating his style. One riff I went off on was the idea that Searle had invented his version of Hogarth’s famous “Line of Beauty”, which in his case was the “Angle of Beauty”, which I claimed was an acute angle of 37 degrees (I made that bit up, but you get the point) which can be seen repeated again and again in his depiction of feet and noses. I argued further that feet and legs – be they spindly, black-stockinged St Trinian’s legs, or the tree-trunk legs of the Masters at St Custard’s – were, for Searle, the windows to the soul.

All that may or may not be true, but I discovered a deeper truth when I was reproducing the standard Searle script for the “Entr’-Act” cards for the programme. Apart from the fact that each letter tended to twist my nibs into unusability, I soon realised something about that gnarled, nobbly lettering: that without the way Searle drew and wrote, most of the best British post-war cartooning would be unimaginable. Every line of Steadman’s or Scarfe’s had its origins in Searle’s blots. Those blots had shown us all the true path.

Anyway, we finished the film and it was duly broadcast – though in post-production I felt they added too many interviews about his life, and didn’t concentrate enough on his drawing, but what do I know? The production company sent him the film, and were greeted with silence. But unreciprocity from your gods is what you should expect, so I didn’t mind that much.

But then, a few weeks after the programme’s first transmission, I got a letter, sent to my home, addressed in a strangely familiar handwriting. It was a personal letter from Searle, thanking me for placing the garlands on his brow and apologising for the fact that he’s be dead by the time it was my turn. The letter is now framed and hangs in its place of honour next to the only Searle original my wife could afford to buy me. Better yet, in the few interviews he’s given since, he’s been kind and generous enough to say he likes my work. So happy 90th birthday, Mr Searle, from a very humble and grateful admirer…

Bloghorn thanks The Cartoon Museum and Martin for permission to publish here in advance of tonight’s opening.