Tim Benson, Britain’s leading authority on political cartoons, compiled an anthology of Britain’s Best Ever Political Cartoons in 2021. He also edits an annual cartoon compilation, and the most recent edition, Britain’s Best Political Cartoons 2025, was published in October last year. (It features cartoons from September 2024 to August 2025.)
The best cartoon in the collection is the one on the cover: a Morten Morland cartoon inspired by James Gillray’s famous satirical print The Plumb-pudding in Danger, which depicted Napoleon and William Pitt literally carving up the globe. In Morland’s version, the two statesmen are replaced by the world’s most powerful man and the world’s richest man: Donald Trump and Elon Musk. (Morland’s cartoon was first published in The Times on 9th January 2025.)
The best cartoon in the collection is the one on the cover: a Morten Morland cartoon inspired by James Gillray’s famous satirical print The Plumb-pudding in Danger, which depicted Napoleon and William Pitt literally carving up the globe. In Morland’s version, the two statesmen are replaced by the world’s most powerful man and the world’s richest man: Donald Trump and Elon Musk. (Morland’s cartoon was first published in The Times on 9th January 2025.)
In his introduction, Benson discusses the Benjamin Netanyahu cartoon that resulted in Steve Bell being fired by The Guardian in 2023, comparing it to the similar circumstances of Gerald Scafe’s dismissal from The Sunday Times a decade earlier. (The two veteran cartoonists, both among the best in the business, each faced accusations of antisemitism following their caricatures of Netanyahu.)