The Cartoon Century

When you leaf through a photograph album, events come back to you where all too often the names, the faces and the places had been forgotten. Books of cartoons of the twentieth century are also full of forgotten or barely remembered episodes: the Anglo-Japanese alliance of 1902; the great ‘Mesopotamian campaign of 1930’ to get Britain out of Iraq; the mysterious death of Commander Crabbe during Khrushchev’s visit in 1956; the Grunwick Dispute, and the allegations of Mr Smith about his relationship with Jeremy Thorpe in 1976. It is chastening to recall that these were once all headline news. Dipping into this fascinating book, however, is not a trivial pursuit for it also includes some great events and great people in a century of turbulence.