Sir Osbert Lancaster,
CBE
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations,
and public service outside the civil service. It was established o ...
(4 August 1908 – 27 July 1986) was an English
cartoonist
A cartoonist is a visual artist who specializes in both drawing and writing cartoons (individual images) or comics (sequential images). Cartoonists differ from comics writers or comic book illustrators in that they produce both the literary and ...
, architectural historian, stage designer and author. He was known for his cartoons in the British press, and for his lifelong work to inform the general public about good buildings and architectural heritage.
The only child of a prosperous family, Lancaster was educated at
Charterhouse School
(God having given, I gave)
, established =
, closed =
, type = Public school Independent day and boarding school
, religion = Church of England
, president ...
and
Lincoln College, Oxford
Lincoln College (formally, The College of the Blessed Mary and All Saints, Lincoln) is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford, situated on Turl Street in central Oxford. Lincoln was founded in 1427 by Richard Fleming, the ...
; at both he was an undistinguished scholar. From an early age he was determined to be a professional artist and designer, and studied at leading art colleges in Oxford and London. While working as a contributor to ''
The Architectural Review
''The Architectural Review'' is a monthly international architectural magazine. It has been published in London since 1896. Its articles cover the built environment – which includes landscape, building design, interior design and urbanism ...
'' in the mid-1930s, Lancaster published the first of a series of books on architecture, aiming to simultaneously amuse the general reader and demystify the subject. Several of the terms he coined as labels for architectural styles have gained common usage, including "
Pont Street Dutch
Pont Street Dutch is a term coined by Osbert Lancaster to describe an architectural style typified by the large red brick gabled houses built in the 1880s in Pont Street in Knightsbridge in London. Pevsner writes of the style as "tall sparingly ...
" and "
Stockbroker's Tudor
Stockbroker's Tudor, sometimes alternatively Stockbrokers Tudor or Stockbroker Tudor, was a term coined by the architectural historian and cartoonist Osbert Lancaster for a style of house that became popular in Britain in the first half of the 20th ...
", and his books have continued to be regarded as important works of reference on the subject.
In 1938 Lancaster was invited to contribute topical cartoons to ''
The Daily Express
The ''Daily Express'' is a national daily United Kingdom middle-market newspaper printed in tabloid format. Published in London, it is the flagship of Express Newspapers, owned by publisher Reach plc. It was first published as a broadsheet i ...
''. He introduced the single column-width cartoon popular in the French press but not until then seen in British papers. Between 1939 and his retirement in 1981 he drew about 10,000 of these "pocket cartoons", which made him a nationally known figure. He developed a cast of regular characters, led by his best-known creation,
Maudie Littlehampton
Maud, Countess of Littlehampton, known as Maudie, is a cartoon character created by Osbert Lancaster. From the late 1940s until Lancaster’s retirement in 1981 Maudie was the leading character in his regular cast of his pocket cartoons in ''The Da ...
, through whom he expressed his views on the fashions, fads and political events of the day.
From his youth, Lancaster wanted to design for the theatre, and in 1951 he was commissioned to create costumes and scenery for a new ballet, ''
Pineapple Poll
''Pineapple Poll'' is a Gilbert and Sullivan-inspired comic ballet, created by choreographer John Cranko with arranger Sir Charles Mackerras. ''Pineapple Poll'' is based on "The Bumboat Woman's Story", one of W. S. Gilbert's Bab Ballads, writte ...
''. Between then and the early 1970s he designed new productions for the
Royal Ballet
The Royal Ballet is a British internationally renowned classical ballet company, based at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, London, England. The largest of the five major ballet companies in Great Britain, the Royal Ballet was founded in ...
,
Glyndebourne
Glyndebourne () is an English country house, the site of an opera house that, since 1934, has been the venue for the annual Glyndebourne Festival Opera. The house, located near Lewes in East Sussex, England, is thought to be about six hundr ...
,
D'Oyly Carte,
the Old Vic
The Old Vic is a 1,000-seat, nonprofit organization, not-for-profit producing house, producing theatre in Waterloo, London, Waterloo, London, England. Established in 1818 as the Royal Coburg Theatre, and renamed in 1833 the Royal Victoria Th ...
and the
West End. His productivity declined in his later years, when his health began to fail. He died at his London home in
Chelsea
Chelsea or Chelsey may refer to:
Places Australia
* Chelsea, Victoria
Canada
* Chelsea, Nova Scotia
* Chelsea, Quebec
United Kingdom
* Chelsea, London, an area of London, bounded to the south by the River Thames
** Chelsea (UK Parliament consti ...
, aged 77. His diverse career, honoured by a
knighthood
A knight is a person granted an honorary title of knighthood by a head of state (including the Pope) or representative for service to the monarch, the church or the country, especially in a military capacity. Knighthood finds origins in the Gr ...
in 1975, was celebrated by an exhibition at the
Wallace Collection
The Wallace Collection is a museum in London occupying Hertford House in Manchester Square, the former townhouse of the Seymour family, Marquesses of Hertford. It is named after Sir Richard Wallace, who built the extensive collection, along w ...
marking the centenary of his birth and titled ''Cartoons and Coronets: The Genius of Osbert Lancaster''.
Life and career
Early years
Lancaster was born in London in 1908, the only child of Robert Lancaster (1880–1917) and his wife, Clare Bracebridge, ''née'' Manger.
[Lucie-Smith, p. 184] His paternal grandfather,
Sir William Lancaster, rose from modest beginnings to become the chief executive of the
Prudential Assurance Company
Prudential plc is a British multinational insurance company headquartered in London, England. It was founded in London in May 1848 to provide loans to professional and working people.
Prudential has dual primary listings on the London Stock E ...
,
Lord of the manor
Lord of the Manor is a title that, in Anglo-Saxon England, referred to the landholder of a rural estate. The lord enjoyed manorial rights (the rights to establish and occupy a residence, known as the manor house and demesne) as well as seig ...
of
East Winch
East Winch is a village and civil parish in the English county of Norfolk. The village is located south-east of King's Lynn and west of Norwich.
History
East Winch's name is of Anglo-Saxon origin and derives from the Old English for the east ...
, Norfolk, and a philanthropist in the field of education. Osbert's mother was an artist, known for her paintings of flowers, who had exhibited regularly at the
Royal Academy
The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly in London. Founded in 1768, it has a unique position as an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects. Its pur ...
;
[Osbert Lancaster]
, British Cartoon Archive
The British Cartoon Archive (BCA) is a department of the University of Kent, at Canterbury in Kent, England, and holds the national collection of political and social-comment cartoons from British newspapers and magazines. Created in 1973, the ...
, University of Kent
, motto_lang =
, mottoeng = Literal translation: 'Whom to serve is to reign'(Book of Common Prayer translation: 'whose service is perfect freedom')Graham Martin, ''From Vision to Reality: the Making of the University of Kent at Canterbury'' ...
, retrieved 20 January 2018 his father was a publisher,
[1911 Census]
Ancestry Institution, Wellcome Library
The Wellcome Library is founded on the collection formed by Sir Henry Wellcome (1853–1936), whose personal wealth allowed him to create one of the most ambitious collections of the 20th century. Henry Wellcome's interest was the history of med ...
, retrieved 30 January 2018 who volunteered for the army on the outbreak of the
First World War
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
, was commissioned as a
second lieutenant
Second lieutenant is a junior commissioned officer military rank in many armed forces, comparable to NATO OF-1 rank.
Australia
The rank of second lieutenant existed in the military forces of the Australian colonies and Australian Army until ...
in the
Norfolk Regiment
The Royal Norfolk Regiment was a line infantry regiment of the British Army until 1959. Its predecessor regiment was raised in 1685 as Henry Cornwall's Regiment of Foot. In 1751, it was numbered like most other British Army regiments and named ...
, and was killed at the
Battle of Arras in April 1917.
Elgin Crescent
Elgin Crescent is a street in Notting Hill, London, England.
It runs west from Portobello Road, crosses Ladbroke Grove and at its south-western end joins Clarendon Road. The section between Portobello Road and Kensington Park Road is formed of ...
,
Notting Hill
Notting Hill is a district of West London, England, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Notting Hill is known for being a cosmopolitan and multicultural neighbourhood, hosting the annual Notting Hill Carnival and Portobello Road M ...
, where Lancaster was born and raised, was an
upper-middle class
In sociology, the upper middle class is the social group constituted by higher status members of the middle class. This is in contrast to the term ''lower middle class'', which is used for the group at the opposite end of the middle-class strat ...
area. The family maintained a staff of servants, including a cook and a
nurse
Nursing is a profession within the health care sector focused on the care of individuals, families, and communities so they may attain, maintain, or recover optimal health and quality of life. Nurses may be differentiated from other health c ...
.
[ Such was the mixed nature of London in the early years of the 20th century that a short distance away were the deprived and dangerous ]Notting Dale
Notting Dale is a mainly residential enclave in the West London district of Notting Hill. It has variously been associated with Irish, Catholic and Gypsy populations.
It forms an electoral ward
Ward may refer to:
Division or unit
* Hospit ...
and the Portobello Road
Portobello Road is a street in the Notting Hill district of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in west London. It runs almost the length of Notting Hill from south to north, roughly parallel with Ladbroke Grove. On Saturdays it is ...
, where, as Lancaster recalled in his 1953 memoirs, it was said to be impossible for a well-dressed man to walk and emerge intact. From an early age Lancaster was aware of the variety of classes, nationalities, and social attitudes around him.
In 1918 Lancaster was sent to St Ronan's preparatory school, Worthing
Worthing () is a seaside town in West Sussex, England, at the foot of the South Downs, west of Brighton, and east of Chichester. With a population of 111,400 and an area of , the borough is the second largest component of the Brighton and Hov ...
. The régime at the school leaned heavily towards sport, in which he was neither interested nor proficient. The headmaster, Stanley Harris, was a celebrated amateur footballer and occasional first class cricketer, but he was reasonably tolerant of Lancaster's disdain for games, and on the whole Lancaster enjoyed his time at the school. His education there was, he later commented, of more importance to him than anything he learned later in his school and university career. He left St Ronan's in 1921, aged thirteen, and went to Charterhouse
Charterhouse may refer to:
* Charterhouse (monastery), of the Carthusian religious order
Charterhouse may also refer to:
Places
* The Charterhouse, Coventry, a former monastery
* Charterhouse School, an English public school in Surrey
London ...
, where his father and uncles had all been sent. There he was shocked by the bullying and bad language, but in addition to its sporty, philistine "bloods", the school had an intellectual and aesthetic tradition.[ Lancaster's biographer ]Richard Boston
Richard Boston (29 December 1938 – 22 December 2006) was an English journalist and author, a rigorous dissenter and a belligerent pacifist. An anarchist, toper, raconteur, marathon runner and practical joker, he described his pastimes as "so ...
writes, "The hearty Baden-Powell
Lieutenant-General Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell, ( ; (Commonly pronounced by others as ) 22 February 1857 – 8 January 1941) was a British Army officer, writer, founder and first Chief Scout of the worl ...
, for example, was offset by Ralph Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan Williams, (; 12 October 1872– 26 August 1958) was an English composer. His works include operas, ballets, chamber music, secular and religious vocal pieces and orchestral compositions including nine symphonies, written over ...
and Robert Graves
Captain Robert von Ranke Graves (24 July 1895 – 7 December 1985) was a British poet, historical novelist and critic. His father was Alfred Perceval Graves, a celebrated Irish poet and figure in the Gaelic revival; they were both Celtic ...
, while talented Carthusian artists had included Thackeray
William Makepeace Thackeray (; 18 July 1811 – 24 December 1863) was a British novelist, author and illustrator. He is known for his satirical works, particularly his 1848 novel '' Vanity Fair'', a panoramic portrait of British society, and t ...
, Leech
Leeches are segmented parasitic or predatory worms that comprise the subclass Hirudinea within the phylum Annelida. They are closely related to the oligochaetes, which include the earthworm, and like them have soft, muscular segmented bodie ...
, Lovat Fraser and Max Beerbohm
Sir Henry Maximilian Beerbohm (24 August 1872 – 20 May 1956) was an English essayist, parodist and caricaturist under the signature Max. He first became known in the 1890s as a dandy and a humorist. He was the drama critic for the '' Saturday ...
".[Boston, p. 47] The art master, P.J.("Purple")Johnson, encouraged Lancaster, insisting that a sound technique was a prerequisite for effective self-expression in drawing or painting; in that respect the boy's time at the school was valuable, though otherwise the headmaster found him "irretrievably gauche... a sad disappointment". Lancaster shared Beerbohm's view that being an old boy of the school was more pleasurable than being a pupil there.[
]
At the age of seventeen Lancaster passed his final school examinations and gained entrance to Lincoln College, Oxford
Lincoln College (formally, The College of the Blessed Mary and All Saints, Lincoln) is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford, situated on Turl Street in central Oxford. Lincoln was founded in 1427 by Richard Fleming, the ...
, to study history. He persuaded his mother to allow him to leave Charterhouse at once, giving him several months between school and university, during which he enrolled on a course of life classes
''Life Classes'' is a 1987 Canadian drama film directed by William D. MacGillivray.
Plot
Mary Cameron (Cormier) lives on the Canadian island of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. There, she enjoys a warm relationship with an old woman she calls Nanny (G ...
at the Byam Shaw School of Art
The Byam Shaw School of Art, often known simply as Byam Shaw, was an independent art school in London, England, which specialised in fine art and offered foundation and degree level courses. It was founded in 1910 by John Liston Byam Shaw and ...
in London. In October 1926 he started at Oxford. There, as at Charterhouse, he found two camps in which some students chose to group themselves: the "hearties" presented themselves as aggressively heterosexual and anti-intellectual; the "aesthetes" had a largely homosexual membership. Lancaster followed his elder contemporary Kenneth Clark
Kenneth Mackenzie Clark, Baron Clark (13 July 1903 – 21 May 1983) was a British art historian, museum director, and broadcaster. After running two important art galleries in the 1930s and 1940s, he came to wider public notice on television ...
in being contentedly heterosexual but nonetheless one of the aesthetes, and he was accepted as a leading member of their set. He cultivated the image of an Edwardian
The Edwardian era or Edwardian period of British history spanned the reign of King Edward VII, 1901 to 1910 and is sometimes extended to the start of the First World War. The death of Queen Victoria in January 1901 marked the end of the Victori ...
dandy, with large moustache, a monocle and check suits, modelling his persona to a considerable degree on Beerbohm, whom he admired greatly. He also absorbed some characteristics of the Oxford don Maurice Bowra
Sir Cecil Maurice Bowra, (; 8 April 1898 – 4 July 1971) was an English classical scholar, literary critic and academic, known for his wit. He was Warden of Wadham College, Oxford, from 1938 to 1970, and served as Vice-Chancellor of the Univer ...
; Lancaster's friend James Lees-Milne
(George) James Henry Lees-Milne (6 August 1908 – 28 December 1997) was an English writer and expert on country houses, who worked for the National Trust from 1936 to 1973. He was an architectural historian, novelist and biographer. His extensi ...
commented, "Bowra's influence over Osbert was marked, to the extent that he adopted the guru's booming voice, explosive emphasis of certain words and phrases, and habit in conversation of regaling his audiences with rehearsed witticisms and gossip."[ Lancaster's undergraduate set included ]Stephen Spender
Sir Stephen Harold Spender (28 February 1909 – 16 July 1995) was an English poet, novelist and essayist whose work concentrated on themes of social injustice and the class struggle. He was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry by the ...
, Randolph Churchill
Randolph Frederick Edward Spencer-Churchill (28 May 1911 – 6 June 1968) was an English journalist, writer, soldier, and politician. He served as Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) for Preston from 1940 to 1945.
The only son of British ...
, and most importantly John Betjeman
Sir John Betjeman (; 28 August 190619 May 1984) was an English poet, writer, and broadcaster. He was Poet Laureate from 1972 until his death. He was a founding member of The Victorian Society and a passionate defender of Victorian architecture, ...
, who became a close friend and lifelong influence.[
Lancaster tried rowing with the ]Oxford University Boat Club
Oxford University Boat Club (OUBC) is the rowing club for male, heavyweight oarsman of the University of Oxford, England, located on the River Thames at Oxford. The club was founded in the early 19th century.
The Boat Race
The club races agai ...
, but quickly discovered he was no more suited to that than he had been to field games at school. He joined the Oxford University Dramatic Society
The Oxford University Dramatic Society (OUDS) is the principal funding body and provider of theatrical services to the many independent student productions put on by students in Oxford, England. Not all student productions at Oxford University a ...
(OUDS), acted in supporting roles, designed programme covers, wrote, and choreographed. He contributed prose and drawings to ''Isis
Isis (; ''Ēse''; ; Meroitic: ''Wos'' 'a''or ''Wusa''; Phoenician: 𐤀𐤎, romanized: ʾs) was a major goddess in ancient Egyptian religion whose worship spread throughout the Greco-Roman world. Isis was first mentioned in the Old Kingd ...
'' and '' Cherwell'' magazines, engaged in student pranks, staged an exhibition of his pictures, attended life classes, and became established as a major figure in the Oxonian social scene. All these diversions led him to neglect his academic work. He had made things more difficult for himself by switching from the history course to English after his first year, a decision he regretted once confronted with the rigours of compulsory Anglo-Saxon
The Anglo-Saxons were a Cultural identity, cultural group who inhabited England in the Early Middle Ages. They traced their origins to settlers who came to Britain from mainland Europe in the 5th century. However, the ethnogenesis of the Anglo- ...
, which he found incomprehensible. Making a belated effort, he extended his studies from the usual three years to four, and graduated with a fourth-class degree in 1930.
1930s
Lancaster's family believed that art was a suitable hobby but an unacceptable profession; they agreed that the best career for him would be the law.[ He dutifully attended a ]crammer
A cram school, informally called crammer and colloquially also referred to as test-prep or exam factory, is a specialized school that trains its students to achieve particular goals, most commonly to pass the entrance examinations of high school ...
and joined the Middle Temple
The Honourable Society of the Middle Temple, commonly known simply as Middle Temple, is one of the four Inns of Court exclusively entitled to call their members to the English Bar as barristers, the others being the Inner Temple, Gray's Inn an ...
, but repeatedly failed his law examinations. His studies were abruptly bought to an end by his health. A chest ailment was diagnosed as possibly tubercular, and he was sent to a sanatorium in Switzerland. After three months he was declared fit, and following a holiday in Venice
Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 ...
– a lifelong love and aesthetic influence – he returned to England in 1931. He abandoned all thoughts of becoming a lawyer and enrolled full-time at the Slade School of Art
The UCL Slade School of Fine Art (informally The Slade) is the art school of University College London (UCL) and is based in London, England. It has been ranked as the UK's top art and design educational institution. The school is organised as ...
in London.
At the Slade, Lancaster enjoyed most of his classes, but particularly those in stage design run by Vladimir Polunin
Vladimir Polunin (1880 – 11 March 1957) was a scene painter.
Born in the Russian Empire, in 1908 Polunin moved to London to work as a designer for the '' Ballets russes''. He was Diaghilev's chief scene-painter and worked with Picasso. Among ...
, who had been Diaghilev
Sergei Pavlovich Diaghilev ( ; rus, Серге́й Па́влович Дя́гилев, , sʲɪˈrɡʲej ˈpavləvʲɪdʑ ˈdʲæɡʲɪlʲɪf; 19 August 1929), usually referred to outside Russia as Serge Diaghilev, was a Russian art critic, pat ...
's chief scene-painter and had worked with Picasso
Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and Scenic design, theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th ce ...
. Among Polunin's students was Karen Harris, daughter of the banker Sir Austin Harris. Lancaster fell in love with her;[Boston, p. 73] his feelings were reciprocated, but she was only seventeen and her parents thought her too young to marry. At first they were cautious about Lancaster's suitability as a husband and provider, but they came to approve of him.[ He and Karen were married in June 1933. They had two children: Cara (born 1934) and ]William
William is a male given name of Germanic origin.Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 276. It became very popular in the English language after the Norman conquest of Engl ...
(born 1938); the former became a stage manager
Stage management is a broad field that is generally defined as the practice of organization and coordination of an event or theatrical production. Stage management may encompass a variety of activities including the overseeing of the rehearsal p ...
, the latter, an anthropologist
An anthropologist is a person engaged in the practice of anthropology. Anthropology is the study of aspects of humans within past and present societies. Social anthropology, cultural anthropology and philosophical anthropology study the norms and ...
.
Lancaster earned a living as a freelance artist, producing advertising posters, Christmas cards, book illustrations and a series of murals for a hotel. In 1934 he secured a regular post with ''The Architectural Review
''The Architectural Review'' is a monthly international architectural magazine. It has been published in London since 1896. Its articles cover the built environment – which includes landscape, building design, interior design and urbanism ...
'', which was owned by a family friend and of which Betjeman was assistant editor. The magazine had a reputation as "the mouthpiece of the modernist movement
Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...
", employing leading proponents such as Ernő Goldfinger
Ernő Goldfinger (11 September 1902 – 15 November 1987) was a Hungarian-born architect and designer of furniture. He moved to the United Kingdom in the 1930s, and became a key member of the Modernist architectural movement. He is most prom ...
and Nikolaus Pevsner
Sir Nikolaus Bernhard Leon Pevsner (30 January 1902 – 18 August 1983) was a German-British art historian and architectural historian best known for his monumental 46-volume series of county-by-county guides, ''The Buildings of England'' (1 ...
.[Boston, Richard. "A few home truths for Dr Pevsner", ''The Guardian'', 18 November 1991, p. 36] Despite describing the Bauhaus
The Staatliches Bauhaus (), commonly known as the Bauhaus (), was a German art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined crafts and the fine arts.Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 4th edn., 200 ...
style as "balls",[ Lancaster was not anti-modernist, but he joined Betjeman and ]Robert Byron
Robert Byron (26 February 1905 – 24 February 1941) was a British travel writer, best known for his travelogue ''The Road to Oxiana''. He was also a noted writer, art critic and historian.
Biography
He was the son of Eric Byron, a civil engi ...
in advancing the countervailing value of more traditional architecture. Chief among his many activities for ''The Architectural Review'' was reviewing books, particularly those on art. His biographer James Knox comments that Lancaster's taste was already assured, appreciating the diverse gifts of contemporary artists including Edward Burra
Edward John Burra CBE (29 March 1905 – 22 October 1976) was an English painter, draughtsman, and printmaker, best known for his depictions of the urban underworld, black culture and the Harlem scene of the 1930s.
Biography Early life
Burra w ...
, Giorgio de Chirico
Giuseppe Maria Alberto Giorgio de Chirico ( , ; 10 July 1888 – 20 November 1978) was an Italian
artist and writer born in Greece. In the years before World War I, he founded the '' scuola metafisica'' art movement, which profoundly influ ...
, Edward Wadsworth
Edward Alexander Wadsworth (29 October 1889 – 21 June 1949) was an English artist, closely associated with modernist Vorticism movement. He painted coastal views, abstracts, portraits and still-life in tempera medium and works printed using ...
and Paul Nash.
Knox singles out as Lancaster's most lasting contribution to the magazine a series of illustrated satires on planning and architecture, under the title ''Progress at Pelvis Bay''. The collected articles were turned into a book, under the same title, published in 1936. It lampooned greedy and philistine property development in a typical seaside resort. Reviewing the book in ''The Observer
''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. First published in 1791, it is the w ...
'', Simon Harcourt-Smith wrote, "Mr Lancaster spares us no horrifying detail of the borough's development... isadmirable drawings complete the picture of progress and desolation. I hope that every local authority and real-estate developer will be compelled to read this ghoulish little book." Lancaster followed this with ''Pillar to Post'' (1938), a lighthearted book with roughly equal amounts of text and drawings, aiming to demystify architecture for the intelligent lay person. The architectural scholar Christopher Hussey remarked on the author's inventive coinage of terms for period styles such as "Banker's Georgian", "Stockbroker's Tudor
Stockbroker's Tudor, sometimes alternatively Stockbrokers Tudor or Stockbroker Tudor, was a term coined by the architectural historian and cartoonist Osbert Lancaster for a style of house that became popular in Britain in the first half of the 20th ...
" and "By-pass Variegated
By-pass Variegated is a term coined by the cartoonist and architectural historian Osbert Lancaster in his 1938 book ''Pillar to Post''. It represents the ribbon development of houses in Britain in the 1920s and 1930s, in a mish-mash of architectura ...
", and described the book as both perceptive and shrewd.
In 1938 Lancaster agreed to help Betjeman write a series of articles for ''The Daily Express
The ''Daily Express'' is a national daily United Kingdom middle-market newspaper printed in tabloid format. Published in London, it is the flagship of Express Newspapers, owned by publisher Reach plc. It was first published as a broadsheet i ...
''. He became friendly with the paper's features editor, John Rayner, who responded positively to Lancaster's praise of "the little column-width cartoons" popular in the French press but not, so far, seen in British papers.[Boston, p. 107] Rayner dubbed them " pocket cartoons" after the pocket battleships
The ''Deutschland'' class was a series of three ''Panzerschiffe'' (armored ships), a form of heavily armed cruiser, built by the ''Reichsmarine'' officially in accordance with restrictions imposed by the Treaty of Versailles. The ships of the cl ...
then much in the news, and invited Lancaster to contribute some.[ The first appeared on 3January 1939. The early cartoons accompanied the " William Hickey" gossip column; later they were promoted to a front-page slot, where they remained a regular feature, with only brief interruptions, for more than forty years, totalling about 10,000. The popularity of Lancaster's cartoons led to attempts by other papers, including '']The Times
''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper ''The Sunday Times'' (fou ...
'', to lure him away from the ''Express'', but he resisted them.[Boxer, Mark. "Pocket-size Belgravia", ''The Observer'', 3 August 1986, p. 21] Although he thought the ''Express's'' proprietor, Lord Beaverbrook
William Maxwell Aitken, 1st Baron Beaverbrook (25 May 1879 – 9 June 1964), generally known as Lord Beaverbrook, was a Canadian-British newspaper publisher and backstage politician who was an influential figure in British media and politics o ...
, "an old brute" and "a bastard", he found him "an ideal employer as far as I was concerned: he left one's work absolutely alone".[Fallowell, Duncan. "The Times Profile: Sir Osbert Lancaster", ''The Times'', 11 October 1982, p. 8][Boston, p. 116]
Second World War
Shortly after the outbreak of war, Lancaster joined the Ministry of Information. He spoke good French and German, and because of that and his journalistic experience, he was recruited by the section handling British propaganda overseas. Several other prominent figures were members of the section and there were many clashes of egos and few tangible achievements. In July 1941, Lancaster was transferred to the Foreign Office
Foreign may refer to:
Government
* Foreign policy, how a country interacts with other countries
* Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in many countries
** Foreign Office, a department of the UK government
** Foreign office and foreign minister
* Unit ...
's news department. His duties included giving daily news briefings to other public servants and the British press, monitoring German propaganda broadcasts, and drawing caricatures for leaflets in German, Dutch and French for aerial drops in enemy-held territory.
In addition to his official duties Lancaster was art critic for ''The Observer'' between 1942 and 1944, and continued to contribute the pocket cartoons to the ''Express''; from 1943 he also drew a large weekly cartoon for its sister newspaper, ''The Sunday Express
The ''Daily Express'' is a national daily United Kingdom middle-market newspaper printed in tabloid format. Published in London, it is the flagship of Express Newspapers, owned by publisher Reach plc. It was first published as a broadsheet i ...
'', under the pen-name "Bunbury".[ Despite the wartime shortage of paper, the publisher John Murray produced a collection of the pocket cartoons every year from 1940 to 1944.][
In December 1944, the war approaching its end, Lancaster was posted to Greece as press attaché to the British embassy in Athens. After the occupying Germans had withdrawn, opposing factions brought the country to the brink of civil war. Fearing a communist takeover, the British government supported ]Georgios Papandreou
Georgios Papandreou ( ''Geórgios Papandréou''; 13 February 1888 – 1 November 1968) was a Greek politician, the founder of the Papandreou political dynasty. He served three terms as prime minister of Greece (1944–1945, 1963, 1964–196 ...
, prime minister of the former government-in-exile
A government in exile (abbreviated as GiE) is a political group that claims to be a country or semi-sovereign state's legitimate government, but is unable to exercise legal power and instead resides in a foreign country. Governments in exile u ...
, now precariously in power in Athens, backed by British troops. When Papandreou's police fired on a civilian demonstration in full view of the world's press, British support for him came under international pressure. The British embassy, at which Lancaster arrived on 12 December, was the target for gunfire from various anti-government groups, and he joined the ambassador (Reginald Leeper
Sir Reginald "Rex" Wilding Allen Leeper (25 March 1888 – 2 February 1968) was a British civil servant and diplomat. He was the founder of the British Council.
Born in Sydney, Australia, Leeper was educated at Melbourne Grammar School, Melb ...
), the British Minister Resident in the Mediterranean (Harold Macmillan
Maurice Harold Macmillan, 1st Earl of Stockton, (10 February 1894 – 29 December 1986) was a British Conservative statesman and politician who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1957 to 1963. Caricatured as "Supermac", he ...
) and a staff virtually under siege.
Following an initiative by Macmillan and the personal intervention of Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 187424 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from 1940 to 1945 Winston Churchill in the Second World War, dur ...
, a new government took office in Athens acceptable to all sides, and peace was briefly restored, in January 1945. Lancaster's task was then to restore trust and good relations between Britain – its government, embassy and military – and the international press corps. In this he was generally thought to have succeeded. After that, he took the opportunity of travelling in the country beyond Athens during the months before civil strife returned in 1946. He explored Attica
Attica ( el, Αττική, Ancient Greek ''Attikḗ'' or , or ), or the Attic Peninsula, is a historical region that encompasses the city of Athens, the capital of Greece and its countryside. It is a peninsula projecting into the Aegean Se ...
, Boeotia
Boeotia ( ), sometimes Latinized as Boiotia or Beotia ( el, Βοιωτία; modern: ; ancient: ), formerly known as Cadmeis, is one of the regional units of Greece. It is part of the region of Central Greece. Its capital is Livadeia, and its lar ...
and Arcadia
Arcadia may refer to:
Places Australia
* Arcadia, New South Wales, a suburb of Sydney
* Arcadia, Queensland
* Arcadia, Victoria
Greece
* Arcadia (region), a region in the central Peloponnese
* Arcadia (regional unit), a modern administrative un ...
, and also visited Thessaly
Thessaly ( el, Θεσσαλία, translit=Thessalía, ; ancient Thessalian: , ) is a traditional geographic and modern administrative region of Greece, comprising most of the ancient region of the same name. Before the Greek Dark Ages, Thes ...
, Epirus
sq, Epiri rup, Epiru
, native_name_lang =
, settlement_type = Historical region
, image_map = Epirus antiquus tabula.jpg
, map_alt =
, map_caption = Map of ancient Epirus by Heinrich ...
and some of the islands
An island (or isle) is an isolated piece of habitat that is surrounded by a dramatically different habitat, such as water. Very small islands such as emergent land features on atolls can be called islets, skerries, cays or keys. An island ...
. He fell in love with Greece,[Hillier, Bevis]
"Lancaster, Sir Osbert (1908–1986)"
, ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, 2004, retrieved 3 February 2018 which he revisited repeatedly throughout the rest of his life.[Knox, p. 85] During his excursions in 1945 and 1946 he sketched continually, and the results were published with his accompanying text as ''Classical Landscape with Figures'' in 1947. Boston describes it as "an unflinching but lyrical account of the conditions of post-war Greece"; ''The Times'' called it "a fine work of scholarship" as well as "an outstanding picture book".[
]
Postwar
During the three years between his return from Greece and the end of the decade, Lancaster published two more books, one a comic story originally written for his children, ''The Saracen's Head'', and the other a further satirical book about architecture and planning, '' Drayneflete Revealed''. In 1947–48 he was the Sydney Jones Lecturer in Art at Liverpool University
, mottoeng = These days of peace foster learning
, established = 1881 – University College Liverpool1884 – affiliated to the federal Victoria Universityhttp://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukla/2004/4 University of Manchester Act 200 ...
, following earlier appointees including Sir Herbert Read
Sir Herbert Edward Read, (; 4 December 1893 – 12 June 1968) was an English art historian, poet, literary critic and philosopher, best known for numerous books on art, which included influential volumes on the role of art in education. Read ...
, W. G. Constable, Frank Lambert and H. S. Goodhart-Rendel.
The 1951 Festival of Britain
The Festival of Britain was a national exhibition and fair that reached millions of visitors throughout the United Kingdom in the summer of 1951. Historian Kenneth O. Morgan says the Festival was a "triumphant success" during which people:
...
gave Lancaster new opportunities to expand his artistic scope. Despite the hostility to the festival shown by his main employer, Beaverbrook, Lancaster was a major contributor. He and his friend John Piper were commissioned to design the centrepiece of the Festival Gardens on the south bank of the Thames
The River Thames ( ), known alternatively in parts as the River Isis, is a river that flows through southern England including London. At , it is the longest river entirely in England and the second-longest in the United Kingdom, after the R ...
. Boston describes it as "a 250-yard succession of pavilions, arcades, towers, pagodas, terraces, gardens, lakes and fountains, in styles that included Brighton Regency, Gothic and Chinese". The main site of the festival, around the new Royal Festival Hall
The Royal Festival Hall is a 2,700-seat concert, dance and talks venue within Southbank Centre in London. It is situated on the South Bank of the River Thames, not far from Hungerford Bridge, in the London Borough of Lambeth. It is a Grade I l ...
, was intended to convey the spirit of modernist architecture; the gardens were designed to evoke the atmosphere of Georgian
Georgian may refer to:
Common meanings
* Anything related to, or originating from Georgia (country)
** Georgians, an indigenous Caucasian ethnic group
** Georgian language, a Kartvelian language spoken by Georgians
**Georgian scripts, three scrip ...
pleasure gardens
A pleasure garden is a park or garden that is open to the public for recreation and entertainment. Pleasure gardens differ from other public gardens by serving as venues for entertainment, variously featuring such attractions as concert halls, ...
, such as Vauxhall
Vauxhall ( ) is a district in South West London, part of the London Borough of Lambeth, England. Vauxhall was part of Surrey until 1889 when the County of London was created. Named after a medieval manor, "Fox Hall", it became well known for ...
and Ranelagh
Ranelagh ( , ; ) is an affluent residential area and urban village on the Southside of Dublin, Ireland in the postal district of D06.
History
The district was originally a village known as Cullenswood just outside Dublin, surrounded by lande ...
.[Knox, p. 60]
The gardens attracted about eight million visitors during the 1951 festival. ''The Manchester Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'' called them "a masterpiece... fantasy on fantasy, red and gold and blue and green, a labyrinth of light-hearted absurdity".
Lancaster's association with Piper led to a second departure in his professional career: stage design. In connexion with the Festival of Britain, Sadler's Wells Ballet
The Royal Ballet is a British internationally renowned classical ballet company, based at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, London, England. The largest of the five major ballet companies in Great Britain, the Royal Ballet was founded in ...
mounted a new work, ''Pineapple Poll
''Pineapple Poll'' is a Gilbert and Sullivan-inspired comic ballet, created by choreographer John Cranko with arranger Sir Charles Mackerras. ''Pineapple Poll'' is based on "The Bumboat Woman's Story", one of W. S. Gilbert's Bab Ballads, writte ...
'' by John Cranko
John Cyril Cranko (15 August 1927 – 26 June 1973) was a South African ballet dancer and choreographer with the Royal Ballet and the Stuttgart Ballet.
Life and career
Early life
Cranko was born in Rustenburg in the former province of Tran ...
, and approached Piper to design it. He could not take the commission and recommended his colleague. This was an opportunity Lancaster had keenly awaited since he was eleven, when his mother took him to see Diaghilev's production of '' The Sleeping Beauty''. He recalled "the dazzling beauty of the Bakst Bakst is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:
* Isaac Moses Bakst (d. 1882), Imperial Russian educator
* Léon Bakst (1866–1924), Russian painter and scene and costume designer
* Ryszard Bakst
Ryszard Bakst (4 April 1926 – ...
sets and the intensity of my own response... There and then I formed an ambition that was not destined to be fulfilled for more than thirty years". Cranko's exuberant ballet was an immediate success – "the hit of the season", in Knox's phrase – and turned Lancaster into one of the country's most sought-after theatre designers. During the rest of the 1950s and the 1960s his costumes and scenery were seen in new productions at Covent Garden
Covent Garden is a district in London, on the eastern fringes of the West End, between St Martin's Lane and Drury Lane. It is associated with the former fruit-and-vegetable market in the central square, now a popular shopping and tourist si ...
, Glyndebourne
Glyndebourne () is an English country house, the site of an opera house that, since 1934, has been the venue for the annual Glyndebourne Festival Opera. The house, located near Lewes in East Sussex, England, is thought to be about six hundr ...
, the Old Vic
The Old Vic is a 1,000-seat, nonprofit organization, not-for-profit producing house, producing theatre in Waterloo, London, Waterloo, London, England. Established in 1818 as the Royal Coburg Theatre, and renamed in 1833 the Royal Victoria Th ...
, Aldeburgh
Aldeburgh ( ) is a coastal town in the English county, county of Suffolk, England. Located to the north of the River Alde. Its estimated population was 2,276 in 2019. It was home to the composer Benjamin Britten and remains the centre of the int ...
and in the West End.[
Although he had provided drawings for a few books by other authors in the 1930s it was not until after the war that Lancaster was continually in demand as an illustrator.][Knox, p. 175] He illustrated or designed covers for a wide range of books, both fiction and non-fiction. His commissions included drawings for works by friends such as Nancy Mitford
Nancy Freeman-Mitford (28 November 1904 – 30 June 1973), known as Nancy Mitford, was an English novelist, biographer, and journalist. The eldest of the Mitford sisters, she was regarded as one of the "bright young things" on the London s ...
, Alan Moorehead
Alan McCrae Moorehead, (22 July 1910 – 29 September 1983) was a war correspondent and author of popular histories, most notably two books on the nineteenth-century exploration of the Nile, ''The White Nile'' (1960) and ''The Blue Nile'' (196 ...
and Anthony Powell
Anthony Dymoke Powell ( ; 21 December 1905 – 28 March 2000) was an English novelist best known for his 12-volume work ''A Dance to the Music of Time'', published between 1951 and 1975. It is on the list of longest novels in English.
Powell' ...
; for best-sellers including C.Northcote Parkinson and P.G.Wodehouse
Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, ( ; 15 October 188114 February 1975) was an English author and one of the most widely read humorists of the 20th century. His creations include the feather-brained Bertie Wooster and his sagacious valet, Jeeve ...
;[ and for other modern authors including ]Ruth McKenney
Ruth Marguerite McKenney (November 18, 1911 – July 25, 1972) was an American author and journalist, best remembered for ''My Sister Eileen'', a memoir of her experiences growing up in Ohio and moving to Greenwich Village with her sister Eileen ...
, Violet Powell
Lady Violet Georgiana Powell (''née'' Pakenham; 13 March 1912 – 12 January 2002) was a British writer and critic. Her husband was the author Anthony Powell.
Life and career
Lady Violet was the third daughter of Thomas Pakenham, 5th Earl ...
, Simon Raven
Simon Arthur Noël Raven (28 December 1927 – 12 May 2001) was an English author, playwright, essayist, television writer, and screenwriter. He is known for his louche lifestyle as much as for his literary output.
Expelled from Charterhouse S ...
and Virginia Graham
Virginia Graham, born Virginia Komiss, (July 4, 1912 – December 22, 1998) was an American daytime television talk show host from the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s. On television, Graham hosted the broadcast syndication, syndicated programs ''Fo ...
. He also illustrated new editions of classic works by authors from Shakespeare to Beerbohm and Saki
Hector Hugh Munro (18 December 1870 – 14 November 1916), better known by the pen name Saki and also frequently as H. H. Munro, was a British writer whose witty, mischievous and sometimes macabre stories satirize Edwardian society and cultur ...
.
Later years: 1960–1986
In ''Osbert: A Portrait of Osbert Lancaster'', Boston comments that after the dramatic events in Athens his subject's later life was uneventful and industrious with "a somewhat dismaying dearth of rows, intrigues, scandals or scrapes to report." The Lancasters had a Georgian house in Henley-on-Thames
Henley-on-Thames ( ) is a town and civil parish on the River Thames in Oxfordshire, England, northeast of Reading, west of Maidenhead, southeast of Oxford and west of London (by road), near the tripoint of Oxfordshire, Berkshire and Buc ...
, and a flat in Chelsea
Chelsea or Chelsey may refer to:
Places Australia
* Chelsea, Victoria
Canada
* Chelsea, Nova Scotia
* Chelsea, Quebec
United Kingdom
* Chelsea, London, an area of London, bounded to the south by the River Thames
** Chelsea (UK Parliament consti ...
, where they lived from Mondays to Fridays. He worked at home in the mornings, on illustrations, stage designs, book reviews and any other commissions, before joining his wife for a midday dry martini
The martini is a cocktail made with gin and vermouth, and garnished with an olive or a lemon twist. Over the years, the martini has become one of the best-known mixed alcoholic beverages. A popular variation, the vodka martini, uses vodka inste ...
and finally dressing and going to one of his clubs
Club may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media
* ''Club'' (magazine)
* Club, a ''Yie Ar Kung-Fu'' character
* Clubs (suit), a suit of playing cards
* Club music
* "Club", by Kelsea Ballerini from the album ''kelsea''
Brands and enterprises
...
for lunch. After that he would walk to the ''Express'' building in Fleet Street
Fleet Street is a major street mostly in the City of London. It runs west to east from Temple Bar at the boundary with the City of Westminster to Ludgate Circus at the site of the London Wall and the River Fleet from which the street was na ...
at about four in the afternoon. There he would gossip with his colleagues before sitting at his desk smoking furiously, producing the next day's pocket cartoon. By about half-past six he would have presented the cartoon to the editor and be ready for a drink at El Vino's across the road, and then the evening's social events.
Karen Lancaster died in 1964. They were markedly different in character, she quiet and home-loving, he extrovert and gregarious, but they were devoted to each other, and her death left him devastated. Three years later he married the journalist Anne Scott-James
Anne Eleanor Scott-James, Lady Lancaster (5 April 1913 – 13 May 2009)
was a British journalist and author. She was one of Britain's first female career journalists, editors and columnists, and latterly author of a series of gardening boo ...
; they had known each other for many years, although at first she did not much like him, finding him "stagey" and "supercilious".[ By the 1960s they had become good friends, and after Karen died the widowed Lancaster and the divorced Scott-James spent increasing amounts of time together. Their wedding was at the ]Chelsea Register Office
Kensington and Chelsea Register Office is an office for the registration of births, deaths, marriages and civil partnerships located in Chelsea Old Town Hall in Chelsea, London. It has hosted the weddings of many notable people.
According to ''T ...
on 2January 1967. After their marriage they kept his Chelsea flat, and lived at weekends in her house in the Berkshire
Berkshire ( ; in the 17th century sometimes spelt phonetically as Barkeshire; abbreviated Berks.) is a historic county in South East England. One of the home counties, Berkshire was recognised by Queen Elizabeth II as the Royal County of Berk ...
village of Aldworth
Aldworth is a village and mainly farmland Civil parishes in England, civil parish in the England, English county of Berkshire, near the boundary with Oxfordshire.
Orthography and slight change of name
Aldworth was recorded in the Domesday Boo ...
, the house in Henley having been sold.[Boston, pp. 229–230]
Though generally a commentator rather than a campaigner, Lancaster made an exception for the protection of Britain's architectural heritage, where he became a leader of public opinion.[Knox, pp. 68–69] The historian Jerry White has written that the demolition of the Euston Arch
The Euston Arch, built in 1837 (and demolished in 1962), was the original entrance to Euston station, facing onto Drummond Street, London. The arch was demolished when the station was rebuilt in the 1960s, but much of the original stone was later ...
in London in 1962 alerted the general public that "without vigilance and sturdy resistance, London was in danger of losing its landmarks one by one, in the interests of either profit or a misconceived public weal".[White, p. 68] Lancaster had been pressing this point since before the war.[ In 1967 he was appointed to the ]Greater London Council
The Greater London Council (GLC) was the top-tier local government administrative body for Greater London from 1965 to 1986. It replaced the earlier London County Council (LCC) which had covered a much smaller area. The GLC was dissolved in 198 ...
's Historic Buildings advisory committee, joining Betjeman, Pevsner and Sir John Summerson
Sir John Newenham Summerson (25 November 1904 – 10 November 1992) was one of the leading British architectural historians of the 20th century.
Early life
John Summerson was born at Barnstead, Coniscliffe Road, Darlington. His grandfather wo ...
.[ They played a major role in defeating the ]Labour
Labour or labor may refer to:
* Childbirth, the delivery of a baby
* Labour (human activity), or work
** Manual labour, physical work
** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer
** Organized labour and the labour ...
government's plans to demolish the front of the Tate Gallery
Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the U ...
.[ In 1973, with Betjeman and others of like mind Lancaster campaigned against the ]Conservative
Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional institutions, practices, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civilization i ...
government's imposition of entry charges to hitherto free galleries and museums; the charges caused admissions to drop drastically, and were soon abolished.
In June 1975 Lancaster was knighted
A knight is a person granted an honorary title of knighthood by a head of state (including the Pope) or representative for service to the monarch, the Christian denomination, church or the country, especially in a military capacity. Knighthood ...
in the Queen's Birthday Honours
The Birthday Honours, in some Commonwealth realms, mark the reigning British monarch's official birthday by granting various individuals appointment into national or dynastic orders or the award of decorations and medals. The honours are present ...
. He and his wife collaborated on ''The Pleasure Garden'' (1977), a history of the British garden. Although great gardens such as Stowe
Stowe may refer to:
Places United Kingdom
*Stowe, Buckinghamshire, a civil parish and former village
**Stowe House
**Stowe School
* Stowe, Cornwall, in Kilkhampton parish
* Stowe, Herefordshire, in the List of places in Herefordshire
* Stowe, Linc ...
were given full coverage, her text and his drawings did not neglect more modest efforts: "The suburban garden is the most important garden of the 20th century and there is no excuse other than ignorance for using the word 'suburban' in a derogatory sense". The following year Lancaster was made a Royal Designer for Industry
Royal Designer for Industry is a distinction established by the British Royal Society of Arts (RSA) in 1936, to encourage a high standard of industrial design and enhance the status of designers. It is awarded to people who have achieved "sustained ...
(RDI) by the Royal Society of Arts
The Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA), also known as the Royal Society of Arts, is a London-based organisation committed to finding practical solutions to social challenges. The RSA acronym is used m ...
, a distinction in which his predecessors had included the artist and architect Hugh Casson
Sir Hugh Maxwell Casson (23 May 1910 – 15 August 1999) was a British architect. He was also active as an interior designer, as an artist, and as a writer and broadcaster on twentieth-century design. He was the director of architecture for t ...
; the typographer Eric Gill
Arthur Eric Rowton Gill, (22 February 1882 – 17 November 1940) was an English sculptor, letter cutter, typeface designer, and printmaker. Although the ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' describes Gill as ″the greatest artist-cra ...
; Charles Holden
Charles is a masculine given name predominantly found in English and French speaking countries. It is from the French form ''Charles'' of the Proto-Germanic name (in runic alphabet) or ''*karilaz'' (in Latin alphabet), whose meaning was " ...
, London Transport's architect; Barnes Wallis
Sir Barnes Neville Wallis (26 September 1887 – 30 October 1979) was an English engineer and inventor. He is best known for inventing the bouncing bomb used by the Royal Air Force in Operation Chastise (the "Dambusters" raid) to attack ...
, the wartime engineer; and a modernist architect with whom Lancaster had vigorously crossed swords, Sir Basil Spence
Sir Basil Urwin Spence, (13 August 1907 – 19 November 1976) was a Scottish architect, most notably associated with Coventry Cathedral in England and the Beehive in New Zealand, but also responsible for numerous other buildings in the Moderni ...
. There would not be another theatre designer RDI until Stefanos Lazaridis
Stefanos Lazaridis (28 July 1942 – 8 May 2010) was a stage designer, best known for his work in opera. Originally intended for a business career, he studied stage design in London, and was quickly in demand in theatres and opera houses, working w ...
in 2003. In 1978 Lancaster suffered the first of a series of stroke
A stroke is a medical condition in which poor blood flow to the brain causes cell death. There are two main types of stroke: ischemic, due to lack of blood flow, and hemorrhagic, due to bleeding. Both cause parts of the brain to stop functionin ...
s, and his health began a slow decline. He designed no more for the theatre, drew his last pocket cartoon for the ''Express'' in May 1981, and published his last collection, ''The Life and Times of Maudie Littlehampton'' the following year.[
Lancaster died at his Chelsea flat on 27 July 1986, aged 77. He was buried with previous generations of his family in the churchyard at West Winch. A memorial service was held at ]St Paul's, Covent Garden
St Paul's Church is a Church of England parish church located in Bedford Street, Covent Garden, central London. It was designed by Inigo Jones as part of a commission for the 4th Earl of Bedford in 1631 to create "houses and buildings fit ...
in October 1986.
Works
Architectural history and comment
In 2008 the architectural historian Gavin Stamp
Gavin Mark Stamp (15 March 194830 December 2017) was a British writer, television presenter and architectural historian.
Education
Stamp was educated at Dulwich College in South London from 1959 to 1967 as part of the "Dulwich Experiment", then a ...
described Lancaster's ''Pillar to Post'' (1938) – later revised and combined with the sequel ''Homes Sweet Homes'' (1939) – as "one of the most influential books on architecture ever published – and certainly the funniest". Lancaster felt that architects and architectural writers had created a mystique that left the lay person confused, and in the two books he set out to demystify the subject, with, he said, "a small mass of information leavened by a large dose of personal prejudice."[Lucie-Smith, p. 146]
From an early age Lancaster had been fascinated by architecture. He recalled his first trip to Venice and the "staggering" view of San Giorgio Maggiore
San Giorgio Maggiore ( vec, San Zorzi Mazor) is one of the islands of Venice, northern Italy, lying east of the Giudecca and south of the main island group. The island, or more specifically its Palladian church, is an important landmark. It ha ...
from the Piazzetta
Giovanni Battista Piazzetta (also called Giambattista Piazzetta or Giambattista Valentino Piazzetta) (February 13, 1682 or 1683 – April 28, 1754) was an Italian Rococo art, Italian Rococo painter of religious subjects and Genre works, genre s ...
, and as a young man he went on what he described as "church crawls" with Betjeman.[Knox, p. 105] His concern for architectural heritage led him to write and draw what Knox describes as "a series of architectural polemics in the guise of disarming 'picture books'". Harold Nicolson
Sir Harold George Nicolson (21 November 1886 – 1 May 1968) was a British politician, diplomat, historian, biographer, diarist, novelist, lecturer, journalist, broadcaster, and gardener. His wife was the writer Vita Sackville-West.
Early lif ...
said of Lancaster's work in this sphere, "Under that silken, sardonic smile there lies the zeal of an ardent reformer... a most witty and entertaining book. But it is more than that. It is a lucid summary of a most important subject". Four of Lancaster's books are in this category: ''Progress at Pelvis Bay'' lampoons insensitive planners and avaricious developers; ''Pillar to Post'' illustrates and analyses the exteriors of buildings from ancient times to the present; ''Homes Sweet Homes'' does the same for the interiors. ''Drayneflete Revealed'' is in the same vein as ''Progress at Pelvis Bay''. In all these Lancaster employs something of the technique he prescribed for stage design: presenting a slightly heightened version of reality. The twisted columns in the "Baroque
The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...
" section are not drawn directly from actual baroque buildings, but are the artist's distillation of the many examples he has seen and sketched. By such means, he set out to make the general public aware of good buildings, and "the present lamentable state of English architecture".[
Lancaster's sketches and paintings in and around Greece are rarely satirical; they are a record of his love for, and careful scrutiny of the country. When his contempt for tyranny prevented him from visiting Greece while it was under military rule he went instead to Egypt, Sudan, Lebanon and Syria, always with a large sketchbook, in which he wrote and drew. From these sketches he produced ''Classical Landscape with Figures'' (1947), ''Sailing to Byzantium: An Architectural Companion'' (1969) and, in a different vein, ''Scene Changes'' (1978), in which he ventured into writing poetry to accompany his drawings. ]Dilys Powell
Elizabeth Dilys Powell, CBE (20 July 1901 – 3 June 1995) was a British film critic and travel writer who contributed to ''The Sunday Times'' for more than 50 years. Powell was known for her receptiveness to cultural change in the cinema and ...
, a well-known Hellenophile
Philhellenism ("the love of Greek culture") was an intellectual movement prominent mostly at the turn of the 19th century. It contributed to the sentiments that led Europeans such as Lord Byron and Charles Nicolas Fabvier to advocate for Greek i ...
, wrote that Lancaster was "one of the few who could make a joke about the Greeks without giving offence; he was devoted to Greece; he was born to celebrate her".[
]
Cartoons
Although the Beaverbrook papers were editorially right-wing, Lancaster was never pressured into following a party line.[ His inclination was to satirise the government of the day, regardless of party, and he felt that his overtly partisan colleagues such as David Low and ]Vicky
Vicky, Vicko,
Vick, Vickie or Vicki is a feminine given name, often a hypocorism of Victoria. The feminine name Vicky in Greece comes from the name Vasiliki.
Women
* Family nickname of Victoria, Princess Royal (1840–1901), wife of German ...
were constrained by their political allegiances. He wrote, "It is not the cartoonist's business to wave flags and cheer as the procession passes; his allotted role is that of the little boy who points out that the Emperor is stark naked".[''Quoted'' in Knox, p. 203]
In the late 1940s Lancaster developed a repertory company of characters in whose mouths he put his social and political jokes. The star character was Maudie, Countess of Littlehampton, who managed to be shrewd and flighty simultaneously. She began as what her creator called "a slightly dotty class symbol", but developed into "a voice of straightforward comment which might be my own".[Knox, p. 203] Maudie's political views were eclectic: "on some matters she is far to the right of Mr Enoch Powell
John Enoch Powell, (16 June 1912 – 8 February 1998) was a British politician, classical scholar, author, linguist, soldier, philologist, and poet. He served as a Conservative Member of Parliament (1950–1974) and was Minister of Health (1 ...
, and on others well to the left of Mr Michael Foot
Michael Mackintosh Foot (23 July 19133 March 2010) was a British Labour Party politician who served as Labour Leader from 1980 to 1983. Foot began his career as a journalist on ''Tribune'' and the ''Evening Standard''. He co-wrote the 1940 p ...
". Her comments on the fads and peculiarities of the day caught the public imagination;[ the art historian ]Bevis Hillier
Bevis Hillier (born 28 March 1940) is an English art historian, author and journalist. He has written on Art Deco, and also a biography of John Betjeman, Sir John Betjeman.
Life and work
Hillier was born in Redhill, Surrey, where the family liv ...
calls her "an iconic figure to rank with Low's Colonel Blimp
Colonel Blimp is a British cartoon character by cartoonist David Low, first drawn for Lord Beaverbrook's London ''Evening Standard'' in April 1934. Blimp is pompous, irascible, jingoistic, and stereotypically British, identifiable by his walr ...
and Giles's Grandma".[Hillier, Bevis. "A Laughing Cavalier", '']The Spectator
''The Spectator'' is a weekly British magazine on politics, culture, and current affairs. It was first published in July 1828, making it the oldest surviving weekly magazine in the world.
It is owned by Frederick Barclay, who also owns ''The ...
'', 4 October 2008, p. 33 Various candidates have been proposed as the model for Maudie, but Lancaster maintained that she was not based on any one real person.
Other regular characters included Maudie's dim but occasionally perceptive husband Willy; two formidable dowagers: the Littlehamptons' Great-Aunt Edna, and Mrs Frogmarch, a middle-class Tory activist; Canon Fontwater, a personification of the Church Militant
In some strains of Christian theology, the Christian Church may be divided into:
*the Church Militant (), also called the Church Pilgrim which consists of Christians on earth who struggle as Miles Christianus, soldiers of Christ against Christia ...
; Mrs Rajagojollibarmi, an Asian politician; and Father O'Bubblegum, Fontwater's Roman Catholic opposite number; they are seen in the illustration to the right, from the 1975 collection ''Liquid Assets''. Lancaster's younger contemporary Mark Boxer
Charles Mark Edward Boxer (19 May 1931 – 20 July 1988) was a British magazine editor and social observer, and a political cartoonist and graphic portrait artist working under the pen-name ‘Marc’.
Education
Boxer was educated at Berkhamste ...
remarked on the way some characters such as the Canon had developed "square characteristics to fit into the shape of the cartoon box".[ In his wartime cartoons Lancaster often caricatured ]Mussolini
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini (; 29 July 188328 April 1945) was an Italian politician and journalist who founded and led the National Fascist Party. He was Prime Minister of Italy from the March on Rome in 1922 until his deposition in 194 ...
and Hitler
Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Germany from 1933 until his death in 1945. He rose to power as the leader of the Nazi Party, becoming the chancellor in 1933 and then ...
; later he rarely portrayed current politicians, although Knox includes a few pocket cartoons from the 1960s in which General de Gaulle
Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle (; ; (commonly abbreviated as CDG) 22 November 18909 November 1970) was a French army officer and statesman who led Free France against Nazi Germany in World War II and chaired the Provisional Government ...
, Harold Wilson
James Harold Wilson, Baron Wilson of Rievaulx, (11 March 1916 – 24 May 1995) was a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from October 1964 to June 1970, and again from March 1974 to April 1976. He ...
and others appear. Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as a representative and senator from California and was ...
featured in a few pocket cartoons during the Watergate
The Watergate scandal was a major political scandal in the United States involving the administration of President Richard Nixon from 1972 to 1974 that led to Nixon's resignation. The scandal stemmed from the Nixon administration's continual ...
scandal; in one he is drawn standing by a flushing lavatory, saying innocently, "Tapes? What tapes?"
The novelist Anthony Powell
Anthony Dymoke Powell ( ; 21 December 1905 – 28 March 2000) was an English novelist best known for his 12-volume work ''A Dance to the Music of Time'', published between 1951 and 1975. It is on the list of longest novels in English.
Powell' ...
commented that Lancaster, having carefully invented and stylised his own persona – "bristling moustache, check suits, shirt and tie in bold tints" – created similarly stylised characters for his cartoons, achieving "the traditional dramatic effectiveness of a greatly extended cast for a commedia dell'arte
(; ; ) was an early form of professional theatre, originating from Italian theatre, that was popular throughout Europe between the 16th and 18th centuries. It was formerly called Italian comedy in English and is also known as , , and . Charact ...
performance".
Stage design
Lancaster's career designing for the theatre began and ended with Gilbert and Sullivan
Gilbert and Sullivan was a Victorian era, Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the dramatist W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911) and the composer Arthur Sullivan (1842–1900), who jointly created fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896, of which ...
. His first costumes and scenery were for the Sadler's Wells Ballet
The Royal Ballet is a British internationally renowned classical ballet company, based at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, London, England. The largest of the five major ballet companies in Great Britain, the Royal Ballet was founded in ...
's ''Pineapple Poll
''Pineapple Poll'' is a Gilbert and Sullivan-inspired comic ballet, created by choreographer John Cranko with arranger Sir Charles Mackerras. ''Pineapple Poll'' is based on "The Bumboat Woman's Story", one of W. S. Gilbert's Bab Ballads, writte ...
'' (1951), John Cranko
John Cyril Cranko (15 August 1927 – 26 June 1973) was a South African ballet dancer and choreographer with the Royal Ballet and the Stuttgart Ballet.
Life and career
Early life
Cranko was born in Rustenburg in the former province of Tran ...
's ballet with a story based on a Gilbert Gilbert may refer to:
People and fictional characters
* Gilbert (given name), including a list of people and fictional characters
*Gilbert (surname), including a list of people
Places Australia
* Gilbert River (Queensland)
* Gilbert River (South ...
poem and music by Sullivan. His last were for the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company
The D'Oyly Carte Opera Company is a professional British light opera company that, from the 1870s until 1982, staged Gilbert and Sullivan's Savoy operas nearly year-round in the UK and sometimes toured in Europe, North America and elsewhere. Th ...
's revival of ''The Sorcerer
''The Sorcerer'' is a two-act comic opera, with a libretto by W. S. Gilbert and music by Arthur Sullivan. It was the British duo's third operatic collaboration. The plot of ''The Sorcerer'' is based on a Christmas story, ''An Elixir of Lo ...
'' (1973).[ In between, he designed more productions for the ]Royal Ballet
The Royal Ballet is a British internationally renowned classical ballet company, based at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, London, England. The largest of the five major ballet companies in Great Britain, the Royal Ballet was founded in ...
, as well as for Glyndebourne Festival Opera
Glyndebourne Festival Opera is an annual opera festival held at Glyndebourne, an English country house near Lewes, in East Sussex, England.
History
Under the supervision of the Christie family, the festival has been held annually since 1934, e ...
, the Old Vic
The Old Vic is a 1,000-seat, nonprofit organization, not-for-profit producing house, producing theatre in Waterloo, London, Waterloo, London, England. Established in 1818 as the Royal Coburg Theatre, and renamed in 1833 the Royal Victoria Th ...
and the West End. It was a matter of mild regret to him that of the twenty plays, operas and ballets that he designed between the two, only one was for a thoroughly serious piece, Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten (22 November 1913 – 4 December 1976, aged 63) was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He was a central figure of 20th-century British music, with a range of works including opera, other ...
's ''Peter Grimes
''Peter Grimes'', Op. 33, is an opera in three acts by Benjamin Britten, with a libretto by Montagu Slater based on the section "Peter Grimes", in George Crabbe's long narrative poem '' The Borough''. The "borough" of the opera is a fictional ...
'', for the National Opera and Ballet of Bulgaria, Bulgarian National Opera in Sofia in 1964.["Sir Osbert Lancaster", ''The Times'', 29 July 1986, p. 18]
Three of Lancaster's theatre designs have remained in use in 21st-century productions, all by the Royal Ballet: ''Pineapple Poll'',
''La fille mal gardée (Ashton), La fille mal gardée'' and ''Coppélia''. In an article on the second in 2016, Danielle Buckley wrote, "Lancaster's surrealist and stylized designs for ''Fille'' amplify the story's pantomime quality, and the exaggerated burlesque of its comedy – but the backdrops of fields that roll into the distance, bundles of hay, dreamy skies and village cottages provide the idealized, pastoral context that the story needs".[Buckley, Danielle]
"How La Fille mal gardée creates pastoral magic through 'Marmite' cartoons"
, Royal Opera House, 7 October 2016, retrieved 11 February 2018 Buckley adds that Lancaster's designs have been criticised for locating the ballet in no particular time or place – "except, that is, of a 1960s London view of idyllic country life".[
Lancaster's stated view was that stage sets and costumes should reflect reality, but "through a lens, magnifying and slightly over-emphasising everything which it reflects". Geraint Evans, Sir Geraint Evans commented on how Lancaster's designs helped the performer: "[His] design for Falstaff (opera), Falstaff was superb: it gave me clues to understanding the character, and reflected that marvellous, subtle sense of humour which was present in all his work."][''Quoted'' on cover p. iv of Lucie-Smith]
Character and views
Lancaster's old-fashioned persona, together with his choice of a countess as his principal cartoon mouthpiece, led some to assume his politics were on the right of the spectrum. But despite what he described as his strong traditionalist feelings he was a floating voter: "I've voted Tory and Labour in my time and I think once, in a moment of total mental aberration, voted Liberal."[ He distrusted the Conservatives for what he saw as their persistent bias in favour of property developers and against conservation. He rarely let his own views show obviously in his cartoons, but his hatred of political oppression was reflected in his portrayal of fascist, communist and apartheid regimes, and he refused to go to his beloved Greece while the military Greek military junta of 1967–1974, junta was in power from 1967 to 1974. In religion he described himself as "a Church of England, C of E man... with that embarrassment induced in all right-thinking men by any mention of God outside church."][
]
Legacy, honours and reputation
Exhibitions
Apart from an exhibition as an undergraduate, Lancaster had four large-scale shows of his works. The first was in Norwich in 1955–56, when Betjeman opened an exhibition covering the range of Lancaster's output, including posters from the 1930s as well as cartoons, stage designs, watercolours and architectural drawings. In 1967 a London show concentrated on his costumes and scenery, with examples of work from plays, ballets, opera and, exceptionally, film (''Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines'', 1965). In 1973, at the instigation of Roy Strong, the National Portrait Gallery, London, National Portrait Gallery mounted "The Littlehampton Bequest", for which Lancaster painted portraits of Willy Littlehampton's supposed ancestors and offspring, in the style of artists down the centuries, from Hans Holbein the Younger, Holbein to Anthony van Dyck, Van Dyck and Peter Lely, Lely, and then to Joshua Reynolds, Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough, Gainsborough and on to John Singer Sargent, Sargent and David Hockney, Hockney. Strong wrote an introduction to the book Lancaster published of the collected portraits. To mark the centenary of Lancaster's birth, The Wallace Collection staged an exhibition titled ''Cartoons and Coronets: The Genius of Osbert Lancaster'' from October 2008 to January 2009. It was curated by James Knox, the editor and author of a lavishly-illustrated biography and catalogue with the same title as the exhibition.[
]
Honours
Lancaster's honours included his Knight Bachelor, knighthood, his Order of the British Empire, CBE in the 1953 Coronation Honours and an Honorary degree, honorary Doctor of Letters, D.Litt from University of Oxford, Oxford, as well as honorary degrees from University of Birmingham, Birmingham (1964), University of Newcastle upon Tyne, Newcastle upon Tyne (1970), and University of St Andrews, St Andrews (1974).[
]
Reputation
In 2008, the year of Lancaster's centenary, Peter York called him "A national treasure... arguably Britain's most popular newspaper cartoonist, certainly our most effective, popular architectural historian and illustrator and one of the most inspired 20th-century theatre, opera and ballet designers." But York added that in recent years Lancaster had been largely forgotten: "People under 40 don't know him", as they still knew Betjeman from his many television programmes.[York, Peter]
"Osbert Lancaster: The original style guru"
, ''The Independent'', 19 September 2008 The ''Oxford Companion to English Literature'' called Lancaster "a writer, artist, cartoonist, and theatre designer, whose many illustrated works gently mock the English way of life: he was particularly good at country‐house and upper‐class architecture and mannerisms, but also had a sharp eye for suburbia." The obituary in ''The Times'' described him as "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."[ Sir Roy Strong wrote that Lancaster's cartoons were those "of a gentleman of the old school... He never crossed into the brilliant savagery of Gerald Scarfe or ''Spitting Image''. The one-liners in his pocket cartoons were Noël Coward, Cowardesque".][
Although he was much praised at the time – Anthony Powell said, "Osbert kept people going by his own high spirits and wit"][ – Lancaster was conscious that the work of a political cartoonist is ephemeral, and he did not expect longevity for his topical drawings.][Strong, Roy. "Knight of laughter", ''The Times'', 27 September 2008, p. 27] His legacy as a pocket cartoonist has been the genre itself;[ his successors in the national press have included Mel Calman, Michael Heath (cartoonist), Michael Heath, Mark Boxer, Marc, Matt Pritchett, Matt and Wally Fawkes, Trog.][ Despite the topical nature of Lancaster's cartoons, they remain of interest to the historian; Lucie-Smith quotes a contemporary tribute by Moran Caplat: "No social history of this [20th] century will be complete without him. He has joined the handful of artists who, over the last three hundred years, have each in their time mirrored our nation."][
''The Times'' said of Lancaster's stage designs, "When the history of Glyndebourne comes to be written, high in the roll of honour will stand the name of Osbert Lancaster, who has the great gift of designing décor that invigorates every opera". But although theatre designs are less ephemeral than topical cartoons, in general they have a practical lifetime measured in years or at most a few decades.][Boston, pp. 224–225] The survival of Lancaster's costumes and scenery for ''Pineapple Poll'' and ''La fille mal gardée'' into the 21st century is exceptional, and most of even his highest-praised productions for repertory works have been succeeded by new designs by artists from Hockney to Ultz.[
Lancaster's prose style divided opinion. Betjeman teased him that it was "deliciously convoluted"; Boston and Knox both echo this view.][ But Beaverbrook's right-hand man, George Malcolm Thompson, said of Lancaster, "The annoying thing at the ''Express'' was that he was not only the only one who could draw; he could also ''write'' better than anyone in the building."
Lancaster's most enduring works have been his architectural books. ''Pillar to Post'' and its successors have been reissued in various editions, and at 2018 are in print as a boxed set entitled ''Cartoons, Columns and Curlicues'', containing ''Pillar to Post'', ''Homes Sweet Homes'' and ''Drayneflete Revealed''. Reviewing the new edition in ''The Irish Times'', Niall McGarrigle wrote, "The books are of their time, of course, but their legacy is part of the strong heritage culture that we rightly fight for today". Alan Powers wrote in ''The Financial Times'', "At least old buildings are now cherished rather better, and the house fronts around Lancaster's birthplace in Notting Hill are jollied up in his favourite pinks and mauves... now we understand that the compact streets and houses of the past provide the best opportunity for social encounters and save energy, and that even bad buildings can make us smile. For both of these revelations, we owe Osbert Lancaster a lot."][Powers, Alan. "Pillar of wit and wisdom", ''The Financial Times'', 12 December 2015, p. 8]
Books by Lancaster
Autobiography
*
*
Architecture
*
*
*
*
*
* Published in the US 1950 by Houghton and Mifflin, under the title ''There'll Always be a Drayneflete''.
* Revised and expanded omnibus version of ''Pillar to Post'' and ''Homes Sweet Homes''. Reissued 1975 as ''A Cartoon History of Architecture''.
*
* Boxed set containing reprints of ''Pillar to Post'', ''Homes Sweet Homes'' and ''Drayneflete Revealed''.
Cartoon collections
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Other
*
*
*
*
* (co-written with Anne Scott-James)
*
* Omnibus edition of ''The Saracen's Head'', ''Drayneflete Revealed'' and ''The Littlehampton Bequest''. Reissued by Pimlico Press, 1992, .
Stage designs by Lancaster
* ''Pineapple Poll
''Pineapple Poll'' is a Gilbert and Sullivan-inspired comic ballet, created by choreographer John Cranko with arranger Sir Charles Mackerras. ''Pineapple Poll'' is based on "The Bumboat Woman's Story", one of W. S. Gilbert's Bab Ballads, writte ...
'', Sadler's Wells, 1951
* ''Bonne bouche'', Covent Garden, 1952
* ''Love in a Village'', English Opera Group, 1952
* ''High Spirits'', Hippodrome, 1953
* ''The Rake's Progress'', Edinburgh (for Glyndebourne), 1953
* ''All's Well That Ends Well'', Old Vic, 1953
* ''Don Pasquale'', Sadler's Wells, 1954
* ''Coppélia'', Covent Garden, 1954
* ''Napoli'', Festival Ballet, 1954
* ''Falstaff (opera), Falstaff'', Edinburgh (for Glyndebourne), 1955
* ''Hotel Paradiso'', Winter Garden, 1956
* ''Zuleika'', Saville, 1957
* ''L'italiana in Algeri'', Glyndebourne, 1957
* ''Les mamelles de Tirésias, Tiresias'', English Opera Group, 1958
* ''Candide'', Saville, 1959
* ''La fille mal gardée'', Covent Garden, 1960
* ''She Stoops to Conquer'', Old Vic, 1960
* ''La pietra del paragone'', Glyndebourne, 1964
* ''Peter Grimes
''Peter Grimes'', Op. 33, is an opera in three acts by Benjamin Britten, with a libretto by Montagu Slater based on the section "Peter Grimes", in George Crabbe's long narrative poem '' The Borough''. The "borough" of the opera is a fictional ...
'', Bulgarian National Opera, Sofia, 1964
* ''L'heure espagnole'', Glyndebourne, 1966
* ''The Rising of the Moon (opera), The Rising of the Moon'', Glyndebourne, 1970
* ''The Sorcerer
''The Sorcerer'' is a two-act comic opera, with a libretto by W. S. Gilbert and music by Arthur Sullivan. It was the British duo's third operatic collaboration. The plot of ''The Sorcerer'' is based on a Christmas story, ''An Elixir of Lo ...
'', D'Oyly Carte, 1971
Source: ''Who's Who (UK), Who's Who''[
]
Notes, references and sources
Notes
References
Sources
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
External links
* Reviews of "Cartoons and Coronets", exhibition and book, 2008:
*
"An original line"
D. J. Taylor, ''The Guardian''
*
"Osbert Lancaster: Savage grace"
Jonathan Glancey, ''The Guardian''
* Lancaster as a dandy:
*
The Importance of Being Osbert
Michael Mattis, ''Dandyism''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lancaster, Osbert
1908 births
1986 deaths
People educated at Charterhouse School
Alumni of Lincoln College, Oxford
Alumni of the Slade School of Fine Art
British cartoonists
Best Costume Design BAFTA Award winners
Commanders of the Order of the British Empire
Knights Bachelor