Carl Giles - Career

Career

In 1937, Giles started work as a cartoonist for the left wing Sunday newspaper Reynolds News, for whom he drew a weekly topical cartoon and a comic strip, "Young Ernie". His strip came to the attention of the editor of the Sunday Express and in 1943 he was interviewed for a job on the Evening Standard, but was eventually offered a job on the Daily Express and Sunday Express instead, at a higher salary of 20 guineas per week, and he quit Reynolds News. His first cartoon for his new employers appeared in the 3 October 1943 edition of the Sunday Express.

Giles later said that he never agreed with the Daily Express's politics, and felt guilt for abandoning the more left wing Reynolds News for it, but it made him wealthy: by 1955 he was being paid £8,060 (approx, £140,405 today) for producing three cartoons a week.

Giles was rejected for war service, due to being blind in one eye and deaf in one ear following a motorcycle accident, but made animated shorts for the Ministry of Information, while some of his cartoons were reprinted in poster form for the Railway Executive Committee and others. In 1945 he became the Daily Express's "War Correspondent Cartoonist" with the 2nd Army.

At one point during World War II he was assigned as War Correspondent to the Coldstream Guards unit which liberated the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Giles interviewed the camp commandant, Josef Kramer, who turned out to be aware of and an admirer of Giles's work. Kramer gave Giles his Walther P38 pistol and holster, a ceremonial dagger, and his swastika armband, in return asking for a signed original of Giles's work. Giles:

I have to say, that I quite liked the man. I am ashamed to say such a thing. But had I not been able to see what was happening outside the window I would have said he was very civilised. Odd, isn't it? But maybe there was a rather dishonourable reason. I have always found it difficult to dislike someone who was an admirer of my work. And strangely, Kramer was. I never sent him an original. What was the point? He had been hanged.

The pistol and armband as well as the whip carried by Irma Grese were later given by Giles to a private collector in Suffolk.

In 1959 he was awarded an OBE. Among his fans were the British Royal Family, who often requested the originals of his work.

Giles finally quit working for The Daily Express in 1989; his cartoons had been allocated less and less space in the newspaper, and he said that the last straw was being stood up following a trip to London to lunch with the editor. He continued working for the Sunday Express until 1991.

He never actually sold any of his creations, preferring to donate them to friends and to charitable organisations, like the RNLI, of which he was Life President and which continues to issue charity Christmas cards each year which bear his work.

He also contributed cartoons to Men Only and other publications, drew advertising cartoons for Guinness, Fisons and other companies, and designed Christmas cards for the Royal National Institute for the Deaf and Game Conservancy Research Fund.