Osbert Lancaster’s Followers (5)

Osbert Lancaster

Born

in London, England

August 04, 1908

Died

July 27, 1986

Genre

Art, History, Memoir

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Born in London, Osbert Lancaster was educated at St Ronan's School, and then at Charterhouse and Lincoln College, Oxford.

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.

Lancaster 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 single-panel, single-column topical drawing appearing on the front page, since imitated in several British newspapers. In these he s Born in London, Osbert Lancaster was educated at St Ronan's School, and then at Charterhouse and Lincoln College, Oxford.

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.

Lancaster 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 single-panel, single-column topical 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 Lancaster drew some 10,000 cartoons over a period of 40 years.

During World War II, he worked in press censorship, 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.

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

He was married twice, first, to Karen Elizabeth Harris, daughter of Sir Austen Harris, with whom he had a son, William and a daughter and second, after Karen died in 1964, to the journalist Anne Scott-James, whom he married in 1967 and who became his widow.

He died of natural causes, aged 77, in Chelsea. The obituary in The Times summed up his career with "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.

His drawings and cartoons were the subject of an exhibition marking the centenary of his birth, entitled 'Cartoons and Coronets: The Genius of Osbert Lancaster' at The Wallace Collection from October 2008 to January 2009. Curated by James Knox and supported by the John R. Murray Charitable Trust of John Murray (publisher), it coincided with the publication of a new biography with the same title as the exhibition.
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Osbert Lancaster’s books

Average rating: 3.72 · 692 ratings · 124 reviews · 127 distinct works • Similar authors

	A Cartoon History of Architecture 4.20 avg rating — 25 ratings — published 1959 — 10 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Drayneflete Revealed 3.60 avg rating — 20 ratings — published 1949 — 16 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Littlehampton bequest really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 16 ratings — 8 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Littlehampton Saga 3.57 avg rating — 14 ratings — published 1984 — 5 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Pillar to Post: English Architecture without Tears 3.89 avg rating — 9 ratings — published 1939 — 8 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Cartoons and Coronets: The Genius of Osbert Lancaster by Osbert Lancaster, James Knox (Introduction) 4.13 avg rating — 8 ratings — published 2008 — 6 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Sailing to Byzantium: An Architectural Companion 3.22 avg rating — 9 ratings — published 1969 — 12 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Homes Sweet Homes 3.63 avg rating — 8 ratings — published 1939 — 10 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Saracen's Head, or, the Reluctant Crusader 3.83 avg rating — 6 ratings — published 1948 — 13 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Progress at Pelvis Bay 4.20 avg rating — 5 ratings — published 1936 — 12 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

More books by Osbert Lancaster…

Quotes by Osbert Lancaster (?)

“Structural truth at all costs war their motto and all buildings which attempted to conceal the true nature of their construction, or to disguise the materials in which they were carried out, stood convicted of acting a lie. That a high proportion of the buildings which many generations of man-kind had agreed to regard as masterpieces failed to reach this exalted standard was held to be quite irrelevant.
Unfortunately the new theory did not in practice prove quite so easy to carry out satisfactorily as hoped. Simplicity is not invariably and on every occasion a virtue, and while desperate attempts to lend some transient interest to a hopelessly uninspired structure by a top-dressing of cornice and pilasters are doubtless reprehensible, the bright, unvarnished truth tends too often to be even more depressing. After all few of us, by and large, look our best in the nude.”
― Osbert Lancaster, Here, of All Places

tags: architecture, brutalism, skyscrapers

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“For at a certain point in time even the greatest architecture ceases to be completely architecture and becomes partially landscape. Sometimes the wheel at last turns full circles; the pyramids are now wholly landscape, Stonehenge but faintly architecture.
from the essay What should we preserve? in The Future of the Past”
― Osbert Lancaster

tags: architecture, conservation, pyramids, stonehenge, time

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