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Irish News cartoonist Ian Knox's work to feature in book of best political cartoons

Ian Knox cartoon featuring Jeremy Corbyn makes the book of best political cartoons of the year.
Ian Knox cartoon featuring Jeremy Corbyn makes the book of best political cartoons of the year. Ian Knox cartoon featuring Jeremy Corbyn makes the book of best political cartoons of the year.

The editor of a book documenting the best political cartoons of the last year says he hopes it will serve as an archive of a time during which global politics changed forever.

Tim Benson has compiled cartoons from some of the UK's best artists for the book which includes two works by Ian Knox which appeared in the Irish News alongside work by the acclaimed satirist for the Guardian newspaper Steve Bell and Martin Rowson.

"This is my forth year of publishing a book of the year's best cartoon and I've been surprised by the popularity. People love the books and I like to think that while topical cartoons can date very quickly, such is the turbulent nature of politics in the last year that this book will be an historic archive of that", said Mr Benson.

"I could have made a book just from events in July alone, when you put it all into context alongside insights from the cartoonists it makes for a fascinating behind the scenes look at politics change".

Mr Benson got some of the cartoonists featured in his book together prior to publication, however, notably absent were any female cartoonists.

There are no women currently working as political cartoonists for the major newspapers. Mr Benson says that's because they're simply "not good enough".

"When you think about that world back in the days of Fleet Street, it was very chauvinistic, it was very male dominated.

"There are only about five or six, maybe seven, full time jobs for cartoonists in the UK, so you have to be top of your game to be successful, and the best in the business are all men.

"Cartoonists are an eccentric lot, they're political and often quite angry people who lead solitary existences, maybe that's a very male thing as well".

And Mr Benson said he wanted to include the work of Ian Knox because his previous books centred mainly on London based cartoonists.

"I wanted to widen it out, because most of the cartoonists are situated in the south of England it can be very London-centric.

"Ian Knox is an amazing cartoonist, some of his work was too specific to Northern Ireland to be included but the two I chose had a wider political context", he added.

Mr Knox said meeting the other cartoonists was "great craic".

"I work in isolation and you can think there is no one else out there doing this for a living so it was nice to meet some other crazies to talk about what we do", he said.

Britain's Best Political Cartoons 2016, by Tim Benson is out now published by Penguin Books priced at £12.

Visit shop.irishnews.com to purchase prints of Ian Knox's political cartoons.