Biography
Peter Brookes was born in Liverpool, on 28 September 1943, the son of an RAF Squadron Leader. After school, he initially joined the RAF to train as a pilot but left to go to art college in Manchester, then the Central School of Art and Design (now named the Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, London).
In the mid-1970s he replaced Chris Achilleos as regular jacket illustrator for Doctor Who novelisations from Target Books but his cartoon-style artwork proved less popular than Achilleos's more naturalistic style and he completed only four covers. In the 1970s, he was also a cartoonist for the Radio Times, taking over the main back-page cartoon from Marc Boxer in 1979. He had a short stint as a political cartoonist for the New Statesman, before returning to academia and lecturing at the Central School of Art and the Royal College of Art. For a time he worked as cover artist for the Spectator but, in 1992, he moved to the Times, as its leader-page cartoonist, at the invitation of its newly-appointed editor, Peter Stothard.
He is particularly noted for his "Nature Notes" series of cartoons, begun in February 1996, which portray various fictitious beasts, based on the appearance (and supposed habits) of well-known politicians. He has noted that a benefit of using animal images is that he can show his subjects doing things that, for reasons of decency, could not be published if they were portrayed as human—Brookes said: "you are able to depict crap and fornication and that sort of thing".
In 2009, he drew a controversial portrayal of Pope Benedict XVI with a condom on his head, which elicited a rebuke from Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor. He was also the subject of an exhibition at the Chris Beetles Gallery in London in October of that year.
Brookes uses T. H. Saunders paper, on which he draws with Pelikan black ink and a dip pen, equipped with Gillott nibs, as well as watercolour and gouache. He says, "There are three stages to the way I draw cartoons: first they are rendered loosely in soft pencil, then I overlay that with pen and Indian ink, and finally I add tone and colour with watercolour."
Brookes, along with his sons Will and Ben, is an avid fan of Premier League team Queens Park Rangers, holding a season ticket for over fifteen years.
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