Les Barton biography

Les Barton (8 December 1923 - 20 October 2008; Wareham, Dorset, UK)

A generation of children grew up giggling to comic strips in Sparky and Whizzer & Chips, drawn by my father, Les Barton, who has died aged 84. He was also a prolific cartoon artist, his gags - populated by wide-eyed folk and often signed Lezz - appearing regularly from the mid-1950s in Punch, Private Eye, the Daily Sketch, Daily Mirror and the Spectator.

The character he made his own from the late 1960s was I-Spy, in a serial in Sparky about a special agent whose face was hidden but whose cloak concealed myriad gadgets, used in animated fashion. He also drew Ma Kelly's Telly, about valve-shaped people who masterminded programmes inside a TV set and, for IPC, Harry's Haunted House and Billy Bunter when the regular artists were indisposed. Later, as IPC tried to re-energise the waning comic market with the irreverent Oink! (a junior Viz), he crafted the Slugs, about a punk band.

A founder member of the Cartoonists' Club of Great Britain in 1960, with a then unknown Ronald Searle, he became treasurer for 20 years. Friends and contemporaries included Chic Jacob, Larry (Terry Parkes) and Bill Tidy. He encouraged many young cartoonists to persevere in this most unsecure profession.

Dad left school at 14 and was a dispatch rider with the Royal Corps of Signals as D-day neared. A motorcycle accident led him to retrain as a draughtsman, and as a self-taught artist, he began submitting cartoons to publications in his spare time during a posting to Lagos, Nigeria.

After the second world war he became a process artist for Associated- Press, but evenings were spent producing 20 cartoons a week, the first for Reveille in 1949, which earned him a princely £7. He worked as a war artist for the Sun during the Falklands conflict, thanks to a dearth of photos in the early stages.

He worked well into his 80s, having diversified into greetings cards and revisiting his talent for caricature as an on-the-spot artist at corporate events. He loved having an audience, once describing the best as "intelligent, well educated and a little drunk".

He is survived by my mother, Dorothy, myself, and my siblings, Lisa, Peter and Samantha.

Les Barton was born on 8 December 1923 in Wareham, Dorset. A self-taught artist, he started work at the age of fourteen as a telegraph clerk. His first published cartoon appeared in the Militant Miner in 1944. During World War II he served as a draughtsman in the Royal Signals and War Office Signals and produced his first regular cartoons for WAM (West African Magazine) when stationed in Lagos in 1946.

After the war Les Barton worked as a photographic retouching artist and commercial artist in advertising, and also drew strips for IPC and D. C. Thomson children's comics - including "Billy Bunter", "I Spy" and "Harry's Haunted House." Barton - who signed his early work "Lezz" - was a regular contributor to Punch from 1954, and his work has appeared in Reveille, Private Eye, Spectator, Oldie, Daily Mirror and the Daily Sketch.

Barton drew political cartoons and caricatures for The Statist in 1963 and 1964, and during the Falkands War in 1982 he was staff war artist on the Sun. He also designed humorous greetings cards for Camden Graphics, Rainbow Cards and Cardtoons. He died in Hayes, Middlesex, on 20 October 2008.
Source: The Guardian & British Cartoon Archive

See LES BARTON ART.