Today marks the centenary of the birth of Ronald “Carl” Giles, a treasured Suffolk icon who became Britain’s best-loved cartoonist.
“Through his cartoons, he epitomised the man in the street’s view of our country – the good and the bad and the changes – and struck a chord with ordinary English people.”
That’s the view of John Field, a foremost authority on Giles’ life and works. He has compiled 10 annual collections of cartoons.
“They still hold good today. He was a character and most people of a certain age group are very much aware of Giles and the contribution he made to the both the art world and cataloguing the history of our country,” Mr Field said.
His cartoons showed the daftness of national life – the flawed institutions, such as British Rail, and the constraints of our class system. Subjects ranged from the BBC and the church, to pubs, bobbies on the beat and the monarchy.
“The Royal Family have over 30 of his originals. I think Prince Philip alone has 16,” Mr Field said.
“When Prince Charles and Princess Anne were asked to organise a dinner for their parents’ silver wedding anniversary, they got Giles to illustrate the cover of the actual dinner menu card. Grandma was the central humour point.”
He was born and grew up in London but made Suffolk his home just after the Second World War. He lived in Tuddenham, near Ipswich, and a statue in his honour stands in the town centre near his former office at Giles Circus.
Giles was famous for his work for the Daily and Sunday Express. In 2000, he was voted Britain’s favourite cartoonist of the 20th century.
“For about half a century, he chronicled British life with three or sometimes four cartoons a week. He just about touched on everything from Beeching’s plan for the railway to the introduction of the national health service and the loss of our empire.
“That’s what one of his strengths was: he put down on paper what many people were thinking about the world as it progressed.
“He was never pompous. He was always a generous cartoonist, never cruel. His was a more gentle humour, and frequently he was able to combine two or even three storylines in one cartoon.
“You had to really search around the cartoon to find all sorts of little incidental things happening in the background.”
Giles was once hailed as ‘a present-day Hogarth and was awarded the OBE in 1959.
According to reports, he was also the highest paid cartoonist in Britain, earning a salary of £8,060 in 1955, the equivalent of £148,000 today.
But his characters were memorable and adored by millions, particularly his formidable, spiky-haired Grandma.
Mr Field said: “I firmly believe that Grandma was based on himself and by using her he could sometimes say things which he felt about our country and the way it was developing. He did it through her mouth and her persona within the cartoons.
Giles could often be found at the Barley Mow pub in Witnesham, about half a mile from his farm just outside Ipswich, or at the Tuddenham Fountain. He belonged to its darts team, whose poor reputation did not strike fear into opposing teams.
So where would he be celebrating today?
“He would be down the pub,” Mr Field said. “At the Tuddenham Fountain probably, or several pubs throughout the day.
“He did mix with the great and the good – such was Edward Heath and Tommy Cooper and Eric Sykes – but I feel he was particularly happy rubbing shoulders with the ordinary people down at the local pub.”
Mike Cook, planning officer at the Ipswich Society, said Giles’ work “outlived immediate topicality”.
He said: “His work was very, very good. They say things which last and people loved him because he said things about what they felt, rather than in a high-powered political sense.
“He said things which were of real importance and they will certainly be of importance for social historians because they will show how a lot of very ordinary British people lived and felt.
“It is a great thing for Ipswich to have had probably the most popular, familiar cartoonist of the late 20th century living here.
“He is held in very fond memory by a lot of ordinary, working people and to see a Giles statue in the middle of the town gives them a good feeling that Ipswich has merit.”
Martlesham auctioneers Lockdales have sold original Giles works for thousands of pounds in recent years. They receive bids from around the world.
One pen, watercolour and pastel work featuring RNLI members running towards a lifeboat in a snowy landscape sold for £3,000 in October 2013. Its estimate was £800-£1,200.
“I’d say we have at least one original Giles piece in each antique and fine art auction that we do,” said Chris Elmy, cataloguer at Lockdales.
“It just seems to be that he was very generous giving away original works of arts to friends and family and acquaintances in East Anglia.”
A Giles framed and glazed original cartoon drawing – depicting Grandma at Heathrow airport, about to board a plane for Majorca whilst being chased by the police and the CID – will be auctioned at Lockdales from October 12-13. It has an estimate of £400-500.
Timeline
Ronald Giles, born London, September, 1916
His family hailed from Newmarket
His grandfather had been a jockey who rode for King Edward VII
Giles grew up in Islington and Edgware
Left school at 14 and worked as office boy in a Charing Cross Road advertising agency
At 18 went to Elstree to work for film-maker Alexander Korda
Took an animation job at Roland Davies’s studio in Museum Street, Ipswich, in the mid 1930s
On the eve of the war, became a cartoonist with Sunday paper Reynolds News in London
Married Joan in 1942
Home became a rented cottage at Tuddenham St Martin, near Ipswich
1943: joined the Express Group
1946: Giles and his wife moved to Hillbrow Farm, Witnesham – just outside Ipswich
His cartoons would be sent to the Express from Suffolk by train or taxi
1959: awarded the OBE
Died in August, 1995 – seven months after Joan
They’re buried at Tuddenham
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