Fleet Street’s Star of India
Mark Bryant describes the life and works of Abu Abraham, the Observer’s first ever political cartoonist.
Fleet Stree has been a magnet for journalists around the globe ever since the world's first daily newspaper, the Daily Courant, was published in London on March 11th, 1702. And among the foreign journalists who have come to these shores over the past 300 years have been a number of cartoonists and caricaturists, especially after the advent of Punch in 1841 and Vanity Fair in 1868. Celebrated expatriate political cartoonists who settled in London in the twentieth century included Will Dyson (from Australia), David Low (from New Zealand), Vicky (Victor Weisz, a Hungarian from Germany) and Bill Papas (a Greek from South Africa). Most had European ancestry but one who did not became the first ever political cartoonist on the Observer - the world's oldest Sunday newspaper (founded in 1791). Born in India, his name was Abu Abraham.
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