Introduction by Michael Parkinson

To say that Carl Giles is a good cartoonist is like saying George Gershwin wrote some nice tunes or Garfield Sobers is a lovely cricketer. It misses the fundamental point of the man: that he is a genius. He will blush at the word but I use it unhesitatingly. I did not even have to think twice about it.

A catalogue of Giles cartoons is a history of our time revealing not simply the mood of the moment but also charting our changing environment. Looking beyond his foreground characters and in the background, you see a church drawn with loving reverence, a street full of important detail, a tree depicting the season. These backgrounds are important because they hold a clue to the artist’s love of the land we live in. It is this love of his subject matter that permeates his work. I am not suggesting that Giles is a soppy romantic. Far from it. But the real quality of his work that I find most appealing is his gentle, quizzical, slightly mocking love of the lot of us, warts and all.

His humour is never hurtful or vicious. It touches all of us who are possessed of that most important human quality, the ability to laugh at ourselves. The man who can make us do that is not simply a gifted cartoonist, he is an important part of our lives and therefore he is blessed.