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Leslie Gibbard (1945-2010) While the cartoons of Les Gibbard could prove controversial, his style has been considered gentle and polite compared to those of Steve Bell and Martin Rowson, his successors at the Guardian. Les Gibbard was born in Kaiapoi, New Zealand, on 26 October 1945, the son of teachers. He was educated at Auckland Grammar School and, while there, contributed cartoons and caricatures to the school magazine. During the same period, the refugee Hungarian artist, Frank Szirmay, tutored him in charcoal and pastels. In 1962, Gibbard began his journalistic training on the Auckland Star, which published his first caricature, of Reginald Maudling, during the January of that year. Fired for his bad shorthand, he moved to the New Zealand Herald, working under its political cartoonist, Gordon Minhinnick, and producing drawings for its sister publication, the New Zealand Weekly News. When sacked by the Herald, he worked at the Sunday News. In 1967, Gibbard moved to Melbourne, Australia, in order to work in a less conservative atmosphere, and drew for the Melbourne Herald.
However, in the June, he left for England, following in the footsteps of a girlfriend. Beginning there as a freelance cartoonist, he became arts caricaturist and pocket cartoonist for the Sunday Telegraph in the following year. In 1969, he began to fill in for Bill Papas by producing political cartoons for the Guardian. Succeeding him in 1970, he remained in the position – with a couple of breaks – until 1994. Most controversial was the cartoon that he captioned The price of sovereignty has increased – official, a critical response to the sinking of the Belgrano and more generally to the Falklands War. Based on a Second World War cartoon by Philip Zec, it appeared in the Guardian on 6 May 1982. During his time at the Guardian, Gibbard contributed to other newspapers and magazines, and to television programmes, while developing a parallel career as an animator. In 1973, he began a two-year stint at the Soho studio of the Canadian animator, Richard Williams, initially assisting the Warner Brothers veteran, Ken Harris, and attending classes held by Disney artist, Art Babbitt. This experience resulted in Newshound, his own animated series for Granada TV’s Reports Politics (1976-77), and work for children, including the Oscar-nominated, Famous Fred (1996), based on a story by Posy Simmonds. Gibbard died on 10 October 2010. His work is represented in the collections of the British Cartoon Archive, University of Kent (Canterbury).
