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Osbert Lancaster, CBE (1908-1986) Through the influence of John Betjeman, Osbert Lancaster cultivated his passion for architecture and, in the mid 1930s, began a series of learnedly satirical works on the history of architecture and design. At the end of the decade, he introduced ‘pocket’ cartoons into the pages of the Daily Express, as a commentary on the social, political and cultural concerns of the day. Their principal characters, Maudie and Willie Littlehampton, were much loved by the public. Osbert Lancaster was born in Notting Hill, London, on 4 August 1908, the son of a businessman who was killed at the Battle of the Somme. He was educated at St Ronan’s School, Worthing, and Charterhouse School, Godalming, Surrey. He then spent some months studying art at the Byam Shaw School of Art (1925), before he entered Lincoln College, Oxford (1926-30); there he became a close friend of John Betjeman, sharing with him a fascination for the Victorians and their architecture.
Failing to pass his examinations for the Bar, he took up art again, studying at the Ruskin (1929) and Slade Schools (1931), latterly under Vladimir Polunin, Diaghilev’s principal stage designer. Through the influence of Betjeman, Lancaster worked on The Architectural Review (1934-39), and so began his series of works on the history of architecture and design, while also illustrating a number of other books. His ‘pocket-sized’ cartoons for the Daily Express began to appear from 1 January 1939, alongside the William Hickey column, and their principal characters, Maudie and Willie Littlehampton, soon became household names. About 10,000 cartoons appeared over forty years. During the Second World War, Lancaster served with the News Department of the Foreign Office (from 1939), and as Foreign Office press attaché at the Embassy in Athens (1944-46). From 1951, Lancaster turned increasingly to work for the opera and ballet, and provided particularly memorable designs for Pineapple Poll (1951, Sadler’s Wells), The Rake’s Progress (1953) and Falstaff (1955) (both for the Glyndebourne Opera in Edinburgh), and La Fille Mal Gardée (1960, Covent Garden). His illustrations to Zuleika Dobson (1952), the novel by his hero, Max Beerbohm, were transformed into large-scale murals for Oxford’s Randolph Hotel. He was awarded a CBE in 1953, knighted in 1957, and appointed a Royal Designer for Industry in 1979. The National Portrait Gallery exhibited his drawings for The Littlehampton Bequest in 1973, while the Redfern Gallery mounted a retrospective exhibition in 1980. Lancaster died on 27 July 1986 at his home in Chelsea. Three years after the death of his first wife in 1964, he had married Anne Scott-James, journalist and author.
