Raymond Jackson; London Political Cartoonist ‘Jak’

Raymond Jackson, 70, the London political cartoonist known as “Jak.” Jackson had been the principal cartoonist at London’s Evening Standard newspaper since 1952, and claimed to be the first cartoonist to break the British media’s self-imposed ban on caricaturing Queen Elizabeth II. When Barings Bank went bankrupt in 1995 after wild deals by rogue trader Nick Leeson, Jak depicted the queen trying in vain to get money from a Barings cash machine. “That’s funny, Philip,” she said to her husband. “I thought I had a few bob left in this bank.” In 1970, when the cartoonist depicted striking power workers as greedy, heartless thugs prepared to let old people freeze, angry print union workers at his newspaper stopped the presses. London-born and bred with a wry sense of humor, Jak was expert at puncturing the pomposity of politicians and revealing the absurdities beneath the affairs of state. On Sunday in Wimbledon, England, after surgery following a heart attack.