British Cartoon Archive

The formation of an academic study centre dedicated to political and social cartoons was first discussed at the University of Kent, in 1972. Interest in the subject had been revived by a successful cartoon exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery two years earlier, entitled "Drawn and Quartered". Dr Graham Thomas, a lecturer in the university's Department of Politics, contacted national newspapers in an effort to locate surviving collections of cartoons, and had found them eager to dispose of the material they held. The idea of a "Cartoon Study Centre" began to take shape, and the first deposit of three and a quarter tons of cartoons - 20,000 original drawings - soon arrived from Fleet…