WORK FOR THE AXE. - an original printed appearance of this cartoon featuring Winston S. Churchill from the 1 July 1925 edition of the magazine Punch, or The London Charivari

London: Punch, 1925. This original printed appearance of a Punch cartoon featuring Winston S. Churchill comes from the personal collection of Gary L. Stiles, author of Churchill in Punch (Unicorn Publishing Group, 2022). His book is the first ever effort to definitively catalog, describe, and contextualize all of the many Punch cartoons featuring Churchill.

This cartoon titled "WORK FOR THE AXE." appeared thus on p.703 of the 1 July 1925 issue of Punch. The artist is Bernard Partridge. The cartoon is captioned "Mr. Churchill. 'SO FAR, SO GOOD. NOW FOR THE REGIONS OF ETERNAL ICE.'" In the image, Winston, dressed as a circa 1920s mountaineer, stands leaning on a pickaxe labeled "FINANCE BILL 3RD READING" while regarding a distant, high peak labeled "STATE EXTRAVAGANCE". Churchill as Chancellor of the Exchequer was seeing his first budget through Parliament. Issues being hotly debated ranged from war debt payments to the U.S., the cost of social programs such as unemployment insurance, health care payments, new taxes and on whom (industry versus individual consumer), and the recent reintroduction of the Gold Standard.

Punch or The London Charivari began featuring Churchill cartoons in 1900, when his political career was just beginning. That political career would last two thirds of a century, see him occupy Cabinet office during each of the first six decades of the twentieth century, carry him twice to the premiership and, further still, into the annals of history as a preeminent statesman. And throughout that time, Punch satirized Churchill in cartoons – more than 600 of them, the work of more than 50 different artists.

It was a near-perfect relationship between satirists and subject. That Churchill was distinctive in both persona and physical appearance helped make him easy to caricature. To his persona and appearance he added myriad additional satirical temptations, not just props, like his cigars, siren suits, V-sign, and hats, but also a variety of ancillary avocations and vocations, like polo, painting, brick-laying, and writing. All these were skewered as well.

Some Punch cartoons were laudatory, some critical, and many humorous, like the man himself. Nearly always, Churchill was distinctly recognizable, a larger-than-life character whose presence caricature served only to magnify.