Sir Osbert Lancaster Biography

British cartoonist and writer on travel and architecture, born in London, educated at Lincoln College, Oxford, and trained in stage design at the Slade School of Art; he was a noted designer of sets for opera and ballet. He became well known for his cartoons in the Daily Express from 1939 to 1981, which voiced his idiosyncratically satirical views on social and political events through the upper-middle class Maudie Littlehampton and her circle; The Life and Times of Maudie Little-hampton (1984) is the fullest of the many collections which appeared. Among his humorously informative commentaries on architecture are Homes, Sweet Homes (1940) and Here of All Places (1959). Classical Landscape with Figures (1947) and Sailing to Byzantium (1969) are based on his travels in Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean. His other books include the autobiographies All Done from Memory (1953) and With an Eye to the Future (1967).