On Front Page of Daily Express : Sir Osbert Lancaster; Master of the ‘Small Pocket’ Cartoon

Sir Osbert Lancaster, a master of the “small pocket” cartoon that became one of Britain’s most popular newspaper features, has died at his home in London, his family reported. He was 77, and death was attributed to “a lengthy illness.”

Lancaster, who died Sunday, for more than 40 years conducted a perceptive and witty social commentary in his small cartoons on the front page of the Daily Express.

He joined the London paper in 1939 and used his sharp pencil to caricature Britain’s ruling classes. Lancaster is credited with inventing the single-column drawings, set in a space measuring 2 inches by 1 3/4 inches and all bearing his satiric, single-line captions. Readers said they often looked at his cartoons before they read the headlines.

His most memorable creation was Maudie Littlehampton, who made witty observations on the social and cultural history of the period. “She’s had a lot to cope with in the way of social revolution,” he observed late in his career.

Said the Daily Express: “Very few of us chat frequently with bishops, hobnob with fraught aristocratic maiden aunts or pass the time of day with striped trousered Foreign Office officials. . . . But the gift of Sir Osbert Lancaster was to make us feel that if we did, we would find them funny and as vulnerable as he did.”

Lancaster was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1975 for his work as a cartoonist, artist and writer. Apart from his cartoons, he designed stages for opera at London’s Covent Garden Royal Opera House and elsewhere and wrote books on art, travel and architecture.