Colonel Blimps' England
History Today
Volume: 34 Issue: 10 October 1984
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David Low,
the cartoonist, met Horatio Blimp, a retired Colonel, in a Turkish
bath near Charing Cross in the early 1930s. Blimp's hearty idiocy so impressed
Low that he included the Colonel in Low's Topical Budget and other cartoons.
Clad usually in his dignity, walrus moustache and bath towel, he dispensed
advice on a broad range of topics. Many agree with C.S. Lewis that Colonel
Blimp was 'the most characteristic expression of the English temper in the
period between the two wars.' His name entered the language, he appeared
in a West End review, he was discussed in Parliament, the press and on the
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radio, and he graced a set of bathroom tiles. During the war he made frequent
declarations in Low's cartoons and elsewhere and starred in Michael Powell's
and Emeric Pressburger's film, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. Reports
of his death, then and later, were premature. He emerged from retirement
at irregular intervals after the Second World War. Various accounts of his
ancestry exist. Either he or a relative were pictured by Will Dyson in the
Daily Herald in 1913, by various artists in Punch, and H.M. Bateman certainly
met him.
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Some predict he will re-emerge when Britannia needs him.
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Blimp (blimp):
1. Small non-rigid airship.
2. Colonel Blimp, character invented by the cartoonist David Low (b. 1891)
representing a pompous, obese, elderly figure popularly interpreted as a
type of diehard or reactionary. Hence Blimpery or Blimpishness.
The Concise Oxford Dictionary, 1964
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Fifty years ago, David Low introduced Colonel Blimp to readers of Beaverbrook's
Evening Standard. Blimp's career, in Low's cartoons and elsewhere, is a
window into an era crucial to Britain's fortunes in the world, on the evolution
of her national symbols, and on the impact of editorial cartooning. By the
end of 1934, Blimp's opinions were savoured widely. Blimps soon became a
class, and 'Blimpish' a synonym for military or administrative incompetence
and heartfelt, unthinking patriotism. This plump, choleric, walrus-moustached,
towel-clad habitué of a West End Turkish bath replaced John Bull,
Britannia and the Lion as the epitome of Britain. Blimp so aptly represented
and reflected the 1.930s that he became public property, endowed with the
virtues and prejudices of the viewer. Tories claimed Blimp for themselves.
'It may well be,' C.S. Lewis observed in Time and Tide in September, 1944,
'that the future historian, asked to point to the most characteristic expression
of the English temper in the period between the two wars will reply without
hesitation, "Colonel Blimp".' After the war, Low used the Colonel less frequently
in his cartoons for the Evening Standard, the Daily Herald and the Manchester
Guardian. Low felt Blimp was pass, over-identified with the pre-war and
war years and his military legend.
Yet more than a few insist that a slimmed-down Blimp still flourishes, his
opinions polished by a public relations hack. In 1969 a Low disciple, Abu
(Abu Abraham, then an Observer cartoonist) complained, in Twentieth Century,
that Blimp had won:
Nowadays the Blimps march in their thousands to demand war, to protest against
the blacks. So common are they in the clubs, in parliament, in business
houses, in universities, and in the dockyards that they have ceased to be
'types' and are virtually uncartoonable. Unlike the blunt bounder draped
in his Turkish towels, the modern Blimps are impeccably dressed, soft-spoken,
highly educated. Last year, John Jensen, an Australian cartoonist working
in England, sighted some at the TUC annual conference. 'There were, up on
stage, Blimps with cloth caps on.' This spring, an Observer columnist identified
'the Young Fogies,' who sound suspiciously like Blimp descendants.
In August 1942, in Strand Magazine, Low wrote, a bit prematurely, of the
death of. Low, the Cartoonist: 'His best known invention was Colonel Blimp.
Low thought he had created in Blimp merely a comic figure typifying stupidity,
but public opinion decided he was a symbol of profound meaning.' In his
Autobiography late in the 1950s Low observed that the rotund Colonel was
'an object lesson in what can happen to a symbol.
Early in 1934, Percy Cudlipp, the Evening Standard's editor, gave Low a
cartoonist's dream an entire page each Saturday for a panorama of small
local cartoons. For continuity in Low's Topical Budget, he needed a few
regular features. 'I decided to invent a "character",' he recalled, 'typifying
the current disposition to mixed-up thinking, to having it both ways, to
dogmatic doubleness, to paradox and plain self-contradiction.' Doubletalk,
doublethink and diehards appalled Low. Abroad, Goebbels was spreading confusion
'softening up the democracies by changing the labels on the bottles.' Public
discourse in Britain was discordant. Of the 1930s, A.J.P. Taylor in English
History, 1914-1945 observed, 'Public affairs were harsh and intense; private
lives were increasingly agreeable... the two sides did not join up. The
public men themselves had the air of appearing in a charade," In 1932 Winston
Churchill agreed; 'I cannot recall any time when the gap between the kind
of words statesmen used and what was actually happening was so great as
it is now' ('Arms and the Covenant).
The word 'blimp' fitted Low's notion of his character, especially its association
with spluttering and bureaucratic blundering. Blimp meant a gas bag and
an experimental non-rigid aircraft. In 1930, one of these, the R101, after
much official fanfare, crashed in France on its maiden voyage. One morning,
still pondering to what profession Blimp belonged, he chanced to read a
Colonel's letter to the newspapers, protesting the mechanisation of the
cavalry, yet insisting they must wear spurs in their tanks. Later that day
Low enjoyed a Turkish bath in the West End with 'Terry,' the reporter Horace
Thorogood. Since 1932, this pair had entertained Evening Standard readers
with a series, Low and Terry, on the byways and rituals of London life.
Low, hot and bathered through the mist, overheard 'two pink sweating drops
of military bearing' gurgling that what Japan did in the Pacific was no
business of Britain's. 'Hah, I thought, the attitude of mind! The perfect
chiaroscuro! Colonel Blimp of course!'
The public met Blimp on April 21st, 1934 in a corner of the first Topical
Budget:
It began almost as a formula: Colonel Blimp and I at the Turkish bath performing
our ablutions or exercising, he uttering to me a blatantly self-contradictory
aphorism. It continued in that form with a few exceptions until a war shortage
of paper ended my topical budget six years later.
Quickly, Blimp and his relatives were ubiquitous. By the end of 1934, he,
or they, attended a meeting of the Cabinet, the League of Nations at Geneva,
the motor show at Earl's Court, inspected the Waterloo Bridge, and assisted
Lord Beaverbrook with his fire escape design. The latter's butler apologised
to Lord Robert Cecil and Gilbert Murray of the League of Nations Fire Brigade.
'Sorry, my man, His Lordship and Colonel Blimp are too busy inventing their
own fire escape to subscribe to the Fire Brigade' (Low Cartoon, November
1.6th, 1934). Beaverbrook immediately telegrammed Low: 'My God if only Colonel
Blimp and you would change sides. My butler is going to bring a libel action.'
Objections and commendations alike on Blimp poured into Low and the Evening
Standard. Some perceived the Colonel as subversive, almost seditious. Harold
Nicolson thought Blimp 'a vast excuse for deriding authority and justifying
disobedience.' To Arnold Lunn the Colonel was an assault on 'England's feudal
and aristocratic tradition.' Others accused him of siding with crime and
anarchy; part of a press plot to foment international disorder, Some Blimp
cartoons elicited vicious threats, including savage anti-Semitic diatribes,
against Low and his family. Balanced against these were many who appreciated
Blimp. 'Until I read the letters concerning Low I had not realised how many
Colonel Blimps there are in real life.' (Michael Stewart, London, July 27th,
1936). 'Sir: Colonel Blimp is an immortal creation positively Shakespearean.'
(A Low Brow, London, March 21st, 1935.) 'Sir Apparently the Blimps are raising
their unctuous hands in protest... I buy your otherwise but by no means
exceptionally mediocre paper because of Low.' (G.N. Marshall, London, March
21st, 1935.) 'Long may Low and Colonel Blimp flourish to pour satire on
injustice and tyranny.' (V.G. Williams, Blackheath, July 27th, 1936.)
And flourish he did. A.P. Herbert sang: 'To be colonel after all is not
exclusive evidence that one's a blot.' Earlier, in the November 1934 Independent,
Basil H. Tripp stoutly denied that the modern British officer bore any resemblance
to Low's mythical colonel. Low agreed, and pointed out that Blimp's comments
were almost exclusively political. An old fogey or two threatened to sue
Low unless Low ceased lampooning him as Colonel Blimp. A number of people
provided information on Blimp and his relatives. In 1938 Low amplified Blimp's
family tree:
Never have I met a man with more numerous and more powerful relations. A
family tree that boasts of Mr. Neville Blimp, the prime minister, Mr. Herbert
Blimp, the Labour leader, Sir John Blimp of the BBC, Mr. Beverley Blimp,
the writer on daffodils, Lord Blimp, the celebrated economist, Baron Blimp,
the newspaper magnate, and George Blimp, the celebrated comedian, have no
fear for the survival of its reputation. Does Blimp exist? Blimp is immortal.
Early in the war, Low buried Blimp, which stimulated Robert Graves to explain
'Colonel Blimp's Ancestors'.
The ox-headed Saxon strain has always been dominant in the Blimp family.
Qualities of shrewdness, wit, humanity, logic, resourcefulness, that intermarriage
with more gifted neighbour races has grafted on our brutish Germanic stock
have never been noted in a Blimp... A word about the old man who has just
died... He was David Low's Colonel Blimp... His son but his son is still
alive and, I regret to say, still on the active list.
Four years in the public eye gave Blimp more confidence. The activity seemed
to keep him trimmer. In December 1938, he was only momentarily embarrassed
by the sudden appearance of one of his relatives, his long-lost brother
PMILB. He was a true Blimp with leftish views, who habitually stood on his
head. 'Gracious ma'am, Lord Dither is right. Pacificism even unto the annihilation
of Peace' (Evening Standard, December 17th, 1938). He vanished shortly,
along with such sentiments. Foreign Blimps surfaced periodically in France,
Russia, and, after the war, in America.
The appendix of the 1937 edition of the Universal English Dictionary recognised
the Colonel: 'a figure in cartoons by Low, caricaturing an extreme die-hard
type of outlook.' Bathroom tiles and ashtrays with Blimp in action were
offered for sale. 'Nine Sharp,' a 1938 Herbert Farjeon review at the Little
Theatre included a skit, 'The Great By-Gadder.' J.F. Horrabin, the radical
cartoonist, wrote to Low in May that the revue was 'easily the most intelligent
show now on. It's a good scene and goodish Blimps.' Low evidently approved
too, since he granted the promoters ex post facto permission to use the
Colonel.
Blimp's influence was noted in the House of Commons. 'It is a complete misrepresentation
and a mistake to suppose that I am associated with a number of respectable,
shall I say, Colonel Blimps,' huffed the Minister for the Co-ordination
of Defence, Sir Thomas Inskip, in February 1937. The War Minister, Sir Leslie
Hore-Belisha in May 1939 assured the House he had buried Blimp long ago.
Low wondered if Hore-Belisha really existed? In January 1940, Blimp and
his relations toasted Hore-Belisha's dismissal: 'Gad gentlemen, Here's to
our greatest victory of the War.' (Low cartoon, Evening Standard)
As noted earlier, Low buried Blimp in 1942 and then resurrected him. That
provoked 'Disgusted' to accuse Low of demeaning religion and Blimp in the
Evening Standard (July 2nd, 1943):
I was taught never speak ill or make fun of the dead... It's neither witty
nor funny but sheer bad taste... I'm beginning to think his name suits him.
Low by name, Low by nature.
P.S. I know Colonel Blimp is a myth, but that does not alter the fact they
are still having a rub at religion.
In 1942 Emeric Pressburger and Michael Powell dazzled Low into lending the
Colonel's name for their satirical film, 'The Life and Death of Colonel
Blimp'. Churchill was not amused and demanded it be stopped. In 'Blimp,
Churchill and the State' Ian Christie suggests that Churchill and the officials
at the Ministry of Information thought this film undermined their notions
of propaganda and the morale of the officer corps. It threatened Churchill's
intense, even mystical identification with the war effort. Blimp and Churchill
were, moreover, too much alike for Winston's comfort, as Christie wryly
observes. Between the wars Low's cartoons often ridiculed Churchill's pretences
and posturing. When the public is ready to tolerate a 'warts and all' picture
of the great war leader, Low's cartoons will be a revealing source. Meanwhile,
despite bureaucratic obstruction and inept bullying by Churchill and his
Government, the film was made, shown in England, and then censored before
being allowed to be seen abroad. Low enjoyed the brouhaha and the film.
He considered that it sentimentalised the old fool so much that many viewers
missed the message about Blimp on which Low had insisted: 'if Britain followed
his
out-of-date ideas in modern war, we should all be blown to blazes.'
By the middle of the war, many others had revalued Blimp, especially the
Tories. When Blimp refused a room in the British Empire Hotel to Learie
Constantine, the West Indian cricketer, a Conservative MP, Sir Herbert G.
Williams protested that the Colonel Blimp he knew would do no such thing:
Dear Low, I always enjoy your cartoons, though I do not always approve of
them, hut I think your 'Blimp' one today is rather deplorable. Perhaps I
can say the more freely as I am asking, as you know, a Question about the
deplorable case of Constantine.
'Colonel Blimp' as far as I know him, is a decent English squire in uniform.
He has frequently been a Colonel in the Indian Army, or a District Commissioner
in Nigeria, and, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred secures the devoted
respect of the coloured men whom he commands or rules. It would never be
'Colonel Blimp' who would treat the black man as Constantine was treated
at the Imperial Hotel the other day.
Low replied: '... Had I drawn the "decent English squire" you describe,
I agree the cartoon would have been rather deplorable. But your conception
of Colonel Blimp is your own and not mine.'
Low's protest was too late. Blimp escaped his control years earlier. An
American in London, General Raymond E. Lee, observed in 1940:
Lady Astor was bound to acknowledge that England was now being saved by
its Blimps and its Blimpish character. I did not get far enough to say what
I really think, which is that Churchill's strength and the reason he refuses
to give ground is because he himself is a Blimpish character who has a very
high intelligence and knowledge of history on top of it.
Even Low's victims insisted on their version of Blimp and his beliefs. One
example among many must suffice. David Margesson, former Chief Whip of the
Conservative Party, and now the War Minister, was the object of 'Blimp's
War for Democracy' in January 1941. Low was sent a copy of Margesson's August
1941 letter to Alfred Douglas, a long-time Low hater:
It was most kind of you to send your sonnet, 'The old soldier!' I liked
it a lot. It's hill of sadness and truth. Looking back on things it would
have been better if we had paid more heed all of us to Colonel Blimp.
If only we hadn't disarmed.
Low was reproached regularly for ridiculing Blimp and men like him, 'without
whose steadfast courage we should never have won war.' The Conservative
Party claimed Blimp fox their own and, in 1943, compiled a dossier and an
exhibit designed to show that Blimp was right and Low wrong.
By the end of the war Low was bored with Blimp. He told Basil Taylor of
the BBC in May 1946: 'I have talked of Colonel Blimp on the air four times.
So far as I am concerned, it is now old stuff anyway.' Blimp appeared infrequently
in his cartoons, and Low left the Colonel to look after himself alongside
John Bull, Britannia, Ally Sloper, Old Bill and Strube's Little Man. He
did, however, strongly protest when Sir Arthur Bryant published 'In defence
of Blimp' in The New York Herald Tribune in 1951. Low told that paper's
editor:
Mr. Bryant's theme is that Colonel Blimp was a derisory and contemptuous
symbol used against the loyalty and patriotism of British public servants...
I must emphatically deny that Colonel Blimp was ever used by me or any one
else so far as I am aware...
In this letter he specified Blimp's origins:
Colonel Blimp was created in the thirties to symbolise the stupidity and
confusion then prevalent in ruling political circles concerning the threat
of Hitler. It was directed particularly against those who thought it wise
to ditch the League of Nations and. Collective Security and make a private
deal with Nazi Germany. Ever since then those who backed the wrong horse
have been trying to distort his meaning into some.
What made Blimp so popular? A rotund chameleon whose colours came to symbolise
Britain of the thirties? First, Blimp embodied that generation's physical
version of the elderly respectable man. Low had finely focused his eye for
stereotypes of all kinds, and his Blimp encapsulated a type everyone recognised.
During the inter-war years most knew a plump personage with a walrus moustache.
Photographs and group portraits, election leaflets, cartoons and newspaper
advertisements often included a Blimp. Some were military; many were not.
Sir Frederick Wall, Secretary of the Football Association and General Lord
Plumer are representative. The latter, however was intelligent and humane;
qualities not evident in Blimp, who understood only half of Mrs Simpson's
adage: 'You can never be too thin or too rich.'
Before the 1914-18 War, Will Dyson in the Daily Herald drew a fat, spluttering
Colonel Corpuscle, outraged over his club staff, who threatened to deny
him dinner by striking. Between 1910 and 1925 H.M. Bateman evolved a stock
Colonel, an active volcano ever ready to erupt. Blimp himself, unlabelled,
turned up in Low's cartoons in the 1920s.
Second, Blimp's world view captured the well-meaning patriotism and reactionary
muddle-headedness of so many public figures in the twenty years between
the wars. Looking back Law recalled:
In the thirties, however, the most notable feature of what remained of the
privileged classes was certainly neither culture, art nor philosophy. Here
and there I encountered the survival of an arrogance which was almost ferocious.
I understood why Britain had lost the American colonies. I understood for
the first time why so many of my own grandparents generation had chosen
to pack up and go to live somewhere else. Looking at and conversing amiably
with some of these respected relics I felt that not very far under their
skins was the brutal stupidity that, even in 1930, could regard human beings
as property and quite naturally identified the public interest with the
sanctity of their purely private interests those disagreeing being, prima
facie, treasonable dogs.
Public life teemed with Blimps, obsessed with good form, taste, patriotism
and a return to the pre-war verities. The New Statesman produced anthologies
of their notions, This England. Dame Lucy Houston (1857-1936) demonstrated
that Blimpishness was not exclusively male. Her memorialist in the Dictionary
of National Biography characterised her as:
... a keen Suffragist... philanthropist and eccentric... a warm-hearted
woman who would brook no contradiction, and demanded implicit obedience
from those who served her. To the general public she was a strident, perhaps
sincere, patriot, who painted her rooms in red, white and blue her racing
colours.
She named her yacht Liberty. In 1932, convinced that war was inevitable,
she offered the London County Council £200,000 for air defence of the
metropolis. It was politely refused.
Lucy Houston appreciated her picture in the papers. When Low obliged she
sent him poetry, in mauve ink, and cigars. Her inclusion in 'Signor Mussolini's
language class' alongside other 'black shirts' Jack Squire, Leo Amery, James
Maxton and Stafford Cripps prompted notes to the Standard editor and Low:
Dear Editor,
I have only just seen Low's cartoon. I am still a freelance. I belong to
no man, but if I did change my colours I would rather wear a black shirt
than a dirty one stained with the blood of Englishmen.
Dear Mr Low,
Someone's been pulling your leg, I trou
For I must let you known I was quite de trop
Sitting in a row with men I don't know.
So here and now I deny in toto
Changing my shirt or my love for Low.
In another letter she gushed to Low:
When I say I admire you l mean it. You are brilliant but you do not understand
my politics. Very briefly I work and live to help our dear country back
to the days when we were honoured and respected by the whole world! And
you do the same I feel sure. So why go for me?
Your true admirer.
When she died in 1936, Low lost one of his favourite victims. The New Statesman
mourned her thus:
We sincerely regret the passing of Lady Houston. She rivalled Low in her
power of making detestable opinions appear ridiculous, and was herself an
incarnate argument against the inheritance of wealth.
She died intestate. No heirs were found and the state received about two
and a half million pounds.
The officer corps had its full quota of Blimps, hostile to change, obsessed
with horses, sport and their regiment, at home mainly in the Empire, which
meant India. B.H. Liddell Hart, in his Memoirs, contended: 'the cavaliers
of the twentieth century jeopardised their country under the influence of
their preference for the horse and the prejudice against the machine.' When
Duff Cooper, then War Minister, introduced the 1936-7 Army Estimates to
the House, he apologised for the mechanisation of the cavalry. 'It is like
asking a great musical performer to throw away his violin and devote himself
to the gramophone.'
Blimp lived; Low provided him with a regular public platform, his cartoons.
The Topical Budget, a weekly comic commentary ran for almost six years,
from April 21st, 1934 to March 16th, 1940. Low, a self-described 'nuisance
dedicated to sanity,' organised an entire page using single gags based on
timely events and gossip, strip cartoons and, invariably, an exhortation
from Colonel Blimp. In the 1930s, many people appear to have learned more
about prominent personalities and events from the Topical Budget than from
newspaper prose. A Standard critic lamented:
The review is a living art in France, but in England, where the Lord Chamberlain
won't let you lampoon Sir Oswald Mosley in a theatre, it's a dead art. Low's
Topical Budget represents the field of modern satire. Yet 75% of Low's targets
would be ruled off the stage.
Low learned to structure an entire page for comic and satirical effect in
the Antipodes, especially at the Sydney Bulletin. Throughout his career
he lobbied incessantly for more room for his cartoons. 'Space was one of
my father's manias,' his daughter Rachael told me. Another was the freedom
to attack or tease whomever he wanted. He ensured his independence from
censorship in his employment contracts, and by selling newspapers with his
cartoons.
Examine Low's Topical Budget for February 26th, 1938. The ways in which
Low manipulated ideas, visual and verbal, caricature, both shape and pose,
and space, dark and light, all become apparent. A bagged-up Low (A visual
pun on the woolsack or woolgathering?) is his sign of the pressure which
the Establishment brought to force him to tone down his one-man campaign
against Hitler and Mussolini and Chamberlain's appeasement policy. He then
caricatures Chamberlain and Mussolini in a parody of the 'England is proud
of her sons' genre. The ridiculous figures patently undermine the wishful
thinking of the appeasers on The Times. Low's dog, little Mussolini, completes
the process of exploding the pretences of appeasement.
The two gags in the centre of the Budget illustrate a technique Low developed
to bring a subject alive. He experimented with poses awkward to draw, rather
than relying on the conventional repertoire of stock figures. The result,
as here shown, is that both jokes move, through we may not realise why.
Tom Driberg, at one time a colleague of Low's on the Standard, observed:
'David Low is a glutton for difficulties and rarely refuses an artistic
challenge.' Low's affinity for puns is demonstrated by the two leaners,
Lord Ashfield and Frank Pick, and the double perhaps triple? meaning
of 'stagger.'
Low sometimes included strip cartoons within the Topical Budget. 'Muzzler'
was another part of Low's response to the direct pleas coming from the Foreign
Secretary, Lord Halifax, to tone down his personal attack on Hitler and
Mussolini. Last, but not least, on the right is TRIUMPH OF BLIMP. Many Standard
readers had seen the Nazi propaganda film, The Triumph of the Will. This
use of the Colonel exposed its pretences. Vladimir Poliakoff was an informant
who leaked Low tidbits on the miasma of self-deception that so polluted
the high politics of the Chamberlain era. Blimp and Low salute each other
with a crossed Heil. Is not one message a double cross?
Throughout his professional life Low was absorbed by the impact of visual
symbols. Cartoonists improvise them to personify the impersonal. The staying
power of obsolete symbols, such as John Bull, Britannia or the Lion worried
him: 'Symbols have a way of obscuring reality,' he wrote in 1936 (in his
introduction to Low's Political Parade) 'and living long after their reason
for their invention is dead; and there is nothing so dangerous as the living
symbol of a dead idea.' Years before he discovered Blimp, Low sought to
revitalise and modernise these outmoded figures. In the 1920s he introduced
Joan Bull, a slim flapper, as a more topical combination of old John and
Britannia, Punch's female tank. Joan Bull never captured the public's fancy
as a contemporary symbol of Britain. Neither did his post-war common man.
Blimp did because his looks were typical, and his opinions captured the
well-meaning, yet muddled mood of the 1930s.
Low was a fertile creator of symbols. There are glimpses of several in the
cartoons used to illustrate this article. Others had to be ignored, notably
the gentle TUC carthorse, the two-headed ass (the Lloyd George Coalition
Government), and the Shiver Sisters (the Cliveden Set). His facility and
imagination in using these images is a key to Blimp's staying power and
Low's accomplishment. He manipulated his characters and meshed ideas, symbols
and words so effectively, that years later, when we look at his cartoons
and his caricatures, we laugh and comprehend, even if the references are
obscure.
From 1934 on, the British public adopted Blimp as theirs. In 1942, after
Low resurrected Blimp, Alfred Lambert wrote how glad he was to see 'dear
old Blimp again':
In this crazy world he brings a little brightness into my life. I am very
old and have known many Blimps: few families have been without them and
your genius has crystalised the type. I should be so proud of having added
a word to the English dictionary. Three cheers for the Antipodes! When I
read of Blimp I think of Low. When I eat a peach (rarely alas) I think of
Melba.
Blimp existed; it took Low to personify him for the public.
Author's Note: David Low's daughters, Dr Rachael Whear and Mrs Prudence
Rowe-Evans, allowed me to consult the Low Papers. His published cartoons
are in the Low Collection at the Library of the London School of Economics
and Political Science. The Centre for the Study of Cartoons and Caricature,
The Library, the University of Kent has about 3000 Low drawings from Low's
years with the Evening Standard (1927-1949), and is organising a full scale
exhibition of David Low's work at the National Portrait Gallery in the Autumn
of 1985, accompanied by an anthology of his work and selected essays published
by Secker and Warburg.
For Further Reading: David Low, Low's Autobiography (Michael Joseph,
1956), Low's Political Parade (The Cresset Press, 1936), Low Again (The
Cresset Press, 1938), British Cartoonists (William Collins, 1942); Ian Christie,
'Blimp, Churchill and the State', in Powell, Pressburger & Others (The British
Film Institute, 1978); Robert Graves, 'Colonel Blimp's Ancestors', in Occupation:
Writer (Cassell, 1951); Charles Press, The Political Cartoon (Associated
Universities Press, 1981).
Author: Mellini, Peter
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