The Second World War in Cartoons (Hardback)

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This is the biggest book ever published about political cartoons and each of of these wonderful cartoons is provided with a full explanation of the historical background, and its relevance to the events of the day.

A great stocking filler!

Pennant - The Journal of the Forces Pension Society - Autumn 2025

Profusely illustrated with over 700 bw cartoons, each captioned with the cartoonist’s name against the name and date of the national or regional publication, from Britain and her Allies, in which it first appeared. Each cartoon is also accompanied by a brief summary of the contemporary news story associated with it which provides the informative, unvarnished and essential historical context. There have been many anthologies published of the work of the well known wartime cartoonists, some contemporary and some more recent publications; however, what distinguishes Tim Benson’s work is that he has deliberately excluded work by the most well known artists and unearthed highly evocative and talented work by many overlooked and unknown cartoonists of the period. I was fascinated, for example, to learn from the author’s introduction that, from the Allies perspective, the ability to laugh at themselves was considered “essential ... to achieve victory.” The lack of a sense of humour, which could neither be manufactured nor bought, was recognised as a weakness amongst the Axis powers and Hitler’s inability to understand British humour led him to instruct his propaganda Minister Goebbels to study Bruce Bairnsfather’s famous Old Bill cartoons from the First World War but, despite their efforts, they came no closer to understanding the British sense of humour and simply pursued a policy of crude and vindictive cartoons which were neither clever nor witty. Arranged chronologically with chapters focussing on the road to war, the phoney war, Britain’s finest hour, the world at war, the tide turns, from Normandy to victory in Berlin and from “Hot to Cold” war the reader is drawn effortlessly through the political history of the War and the book is a real tour de force. It is clear that for Tim Benson, a leading authority on political cartoons, he runs the Political Cartoon Gallery near the River Thames in Putney, this book is a labour of love. The book is without doubt Europe-centric but I sense The Second World War in Cartoons will become a standard work on the subject and, although to call it a “coffee table book” would unfairly trivialise the serious nature of the book and it’s academic value to historians, it makes compelling, informative and easy reading. Highly recommended.

Military Historical Society

This is a unique collection of 900 cartoons tracing the history of the war, creating an unparalleled narrative of the worldwide conflict.

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