MR. CHURCHILL ASKS HIS DAD - an original printed appearance of this Second World War cartoon featuring then-Leader of the Opposition Winston S. Churchill and British Prime Minister Clement Attlee in the 27 April 1949 edition of the magazine Punch, or The London Charivari

London: Punch, 1945. This original printed appearance of a Punch cartoon featuring Winston S. Churchill comes from the personal collection of Gary L. Stiles, author of Churchill in Punch (Unicorn Publishing Group, 2022). His book is the first ever effort to definitively catalog, describe, and contextualize all of the many Punch cartoons featuring Churchill.

This cartoon titled "MR CHURCHILL ASKS HIS DAD" appeared thus on p.457 of the 27 April 1949 issue of Punch. The cartoon is captioned "A preview of the forthcoming defence talks between the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition." The artist is Ernest Howard Shepard (1879-1976), illustrator both for Punch and for a number of A. A. Milne’s Pooh books.

Clement Richard Attlee (1883-1967) and Winston S. Churchill (1874-1965) served as the Prime Ministers of Great Britain from May 1940 to April 1955, spending the entirely of these 15 years either in Government or in Opposition. Attlee was the socialist Labour leader who famously replaced Churchill as Prime Minister in July 1945 and whom Churchill would in turn defeat and replace in October 1951. Churchill had no reluctance confronting Attlee with his ideas about national defense. Despite Attlee's grumpy demeanor in this cartoon, the two tended to agree more than disagree about preparedness.

Punch or The London Charivari began featuring Churchill cartoons in 1900, when his political career was just beginning. That political career would last two thirds of a century, see him occupy Cabinet office during each of the first six decades of the twentieth century, carry him twice to the premiership and, further still, into the annals of history as a preeminent statesman. And throughout that time, Punch satirized Churchill in cartoons – more than 600 of them, the work of more than 50 different artists.

It was a near-perfect relationship between satirists and subject. That Churchill was distinctive in both persona and physical appearance helped make him easy to caricature. To his persona and appearance he added myriad additional satirical temptations, not just props, like his cigars, siren suits, V-sign, and hats, but also a variety of ancillary avocations and vocations, like polo, painting, brick-laying, and writing. All these were skewered as well.

Some Punch cartoons were laudatory, some critical, and many humorous, like the man himself. Nearly always, Churchill was distinctly recognizable, a larger-than-life character whose presence caricature served only to magnify.