Lancaster, Sir Osbert (1908-1986), an artist and author, won fame with his humorous cartoons for the British newspaper The Daily Express. His best-known creation was the Littlehampton family, a brilliant satire of the English upper classes. Lancaster’s many books, which consisted mainly of humorous and satirical drawings, include Progress at Pelvis Bay (1936), his first book; Drayneflete Revealed (1949); and The Littlehampton Bequest (1973). Lancaster wrote two volumes of autobiography, All Done from Memory (1953) and With an Eye to the Future (1967).
Lancaster was born on Aug. 4, 1908, in London and educated at Oxford University from 1926 to 1930 and the Slade School of Art in 1930 and 1931. He trained as a stage designer for opera and ballet. In 1939, Lancaster became a regular cartoonist with The Daily Express. Over the next 40 years, Lancaster drew about 10,000 cartoons for the newspaper. From 1934 to 1939, he also helped to edit the Architectural Review, producing witty books on architecture and design, notably Pillar to Post (1938) and Homes, Sweet Homes (1939). For many years, Lancaster was adviser to the Greater London Council, then the city’s central governmental authority on historic buildings. He was knighted in 1975. Lancaster died on July 27, 1986.
