Colonel Blimp is perhaps the most famous of David Low’s creations, but he is only one of a splendid company known to millions. The Old Horse representing the T.U.C., the distraught goddess of Peace with hair standing on end, Old Ma Pravda and the Communist Crocodile, the steaming gentlemen with loud ties and thick glasses that stand for Transatlantic reaction (to say nothing of Low’s versions of the statesmen themselves symbolising their own policies) — these are familiar figures, protagonists all-too-recognisable in the pageant of our times. To-day David Low, because of his network of re-publications in over two hundred newspapers throughout the world, has an audience unparalleled in political cartooning. No one questions his stature as a cartoonist; and as a commentator on the political scene whose opinions, independent and often controversial, have been expressed in the immediate aftermath of World War II, his work will be welcomed in this more permanent form. He writes as he draws, simply and with calculated aim. Beyond the ridicule of evasion, subterfuge and false doctrine, his drawings convey, above all, the satirist’s contempt for stupidity and, by implied contrast, a vision of better things.

The cartoons reproduced here are mainly concerned with foreign affairs between 1945 and 1953, though many glances at the domestic scene are included.

All cartoons in chronological order from the British Cartoonist David Low, very useful primary sourcebook for cartoon imagery for anyone studying World War 2 it is very useful for The Cold War between 1945-1953 with Stalin featuring in many of his cartoons, each cartoon in the book is titled with a date and the cartoons are blown up to be one per page in the book itself.