Osbert Lancaster - Biography

Biography

Lancaster was born in London, England. He was educated at St Ronan's School and then at Charterhouse and Lincoln College, Oxford. At Oxford he became friends with John Betjeman, drew cartoons for the University magazine Cherwell, and developed his trademark upper-class persona. He graduated with a fourth-class degree in English after an extra year beyond the normal three years of study. Intending a career in law, he failed his bar exams and instead entered the Slade School of Art in London.

He initially worked alongside Betjeman at the Architectural Review. In 1936, he published Progress at Pelvis Bay, the first of his many books of social and architectural satire. In 1939 he became cartoonist at the Daily Express, where he pioneered the Pocket Cartoon, a topical single-panel single-column drawing appearing on the front page, since imitated in several British newspapers. In these he sympathetically mocked the British upper classes, personified by his characters William (8th Earl of Littlehampton, formerly Viscount Draynflete) and his wife Maudie. During his Express career he drew some 10,000 cartoons over a period of 40 years.

During World War II, he worked for the press censorship bureau, then in Greece as a Foreign Office press attaché. During the war years, his cartoons provided comic relief from the privations of rationing and bombing raids. After the war he published Classical Landscape with Figures (1947), The Saracen's Head (1948) and Drayneflete Revealed (1949), the last dealing with the Littlehamptons' architectural and artistic inheritances. Along with The Littlehampton Bequest (1973, foreword by Sir Roy Strong), it provided a humorous and satirical, but very well-informed, survey of architectural and aesthetic trends in British and European history.

In 1951, he worked with John Piper on designs for the Festival of Britain, followed by stage design work for opera, ballet and theatre including productions at Sadler's Wells and Glyndebourne, among them Frederick Ashton's production of La Fille mal gardée.

Lancaster himself was firmly from the British upper middle classes—as his autobiographies All Done From Memory (1963) and With an Eye to the Future (1967), and all his books illustrated by himself, make clear. In later life, it was observed that he affected a caricatured persona similar to those depicted in his drawings. His attitude to the British aristocracy might be seen to be tinged with envy. When he was knighted in 1975 he became one of only a small number of cartoonists to have received the honour, John Tenniel and David Low being others.

He was the illustrator of many other books including Noblesse Oblige (London, Hamish Hamilton, 1973, edited by Nancy Mitford, and some editions of C. Northcote Parkinson's books, including Parkinson's Law, its sequel The Law and the Profits, In-laws & Outlaws, and Law of Delay.

He was married twice: to Karen Elizabeth Harris (the daughter of Sir Austen Harris), with whom he had a son, William and a daughter; Harris died in 1964. In 1967, he married the journalist Anne Scott-James, to whom he remained married until he died.

Apart from his knighthood, his honours include a CBE in 1953, an honorary DLitt from Oxford, as well as honorary degrees from Birmingham (1964), Newcastle upon Tyne (1970), and St Andrews (1974).

He died of natural causes, aged 77, in Chelsea. He was fondly summarised in his Times obituary: "The most polite and unsplenetic of cartoonists, he was never a crusader, remaining always a witty, civilized critic with a profound understanding of the vagaries of human nature." He is buried at West Winch, Norfolk.