'The Opening of Historical Buildings', a drawing by Lancaster featuring Maudie and William Littlehampton

He was educated at Charterhouse and Lincoln College, Oxford, where 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 Slade School of Art.

He initially worked wth 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.

In 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 was therefore tinged by envy. When he was knighted in 1975 he was one of only a handful of cartoonists to have received such an 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 ^[1], its sequel The Law and the Profits^[2], In-laws & Outlaws ^[3], and Law of Delay ^[4].

He was married twice: to Karen Elizabeth Harris (the daughter of Sir Austen Harris), with whom he had a son and a daughter. She died in 1964, and in 1967 he married secondly the journalist Anne Scott-James.^[5]

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 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".^[6]

He is buried at West Winch, Norfolk.

His drawings and cartoons are the subject of an exhibition marking the centenary of his birth, 'Cartoons and Coronets: The Genius of Osbert Lancaster', at The Wallace Collection from 2 October 2008 to 11 January 2009. Curated by James Knox and supported by the John R Murray Charitable Trust of John Murray (publisher), it coincides with the publication of a new biography, Cartoons and Coronets: The Genius of Osbert Lancaster.^[7][8]

References

• Bevis Hillier, "Lancaster, Sir Osbert (1908?1986)", rev., Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 17 July 2007

Selected publications

• Drayneflete Revealed (1949) - a humorous history of British architecture, tracing the development of 'Draynflete' over the centuries.
• Here of All Places
• Façades and Faces (London, John Murray, 1950)
• Sailing to Byzantium: an architectural companion (London, John Murray, 1969)
• All Done from Memory (1963) and With an Eye to the Future (1973), autobiography.
• Cartoons and Coronets: The Genius of Osbert Lancaster (London, Frances Lincoln Ltd Publishers, 2008)

External links

• Osbert Lancaster, British Cartoon Archive, University of Kent
• Biography, American Ballet Theatre
• Osbert Lancaster 2008/09 exhibition, The Wallace Collection

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