George III and Bonaparte as the King of Brobdignag and Gulliver- James Gillray

Gillray was the Godfather of modern political cartoonists. Frequently scatological, always disrespectful of those in power.

The Plumb-Pudding in Danger- James Gillray

I'm guessing that this depicts British Prime Minister William Pitt and Bonaparte carving up the globe after the short-lived Peace of Amiens with revolutionary France.

Dido in Despair- James Gillray

Emma, Lady Hamilton mourns the departure of Lord Nelson on the (fatal) Trafalgar campaign.

Little Devil Sinks his Teeth into the Swollen Foot of a Gout Sufferer- James Gillray

The Prince Regent suffered from gout.

Fashionable Contrasts: the Duchess' Little Shoe Yielding to the Magnitude of the Duke- James Gillray

A Wellington Boot or The Head of the Army. Caricature of the Duke of Wellington.

Crying For a New Toy- Isaac Cruikshank.

An inadequately potty-trained Napoleon (note the potty-training stool in the background) demands his new crown as Emperor of France.

Napoleon apparently viewed the caricatures of himself in the British press with a certain appalled fascination.

British cartoonist Gerald Scarfe eventually stopped doing caricatures of politicians because he came to believe that, ultimately, it only encouraged them by feeding their vanity.

http://hdl.handle.net/2262/3798

The Master of the Ordnance Exercising his Hobby.

Wellington, mounted on a phallic cannon, excites the admiration of passing ladies.

Click to enlarge the image.

The Gillray/Cruikshank legacy lives on in British political cartooning.

This is Steve Bell on George W Bush's farewell European tour: Dubya as Sid Vicious.

He drew a lot of bum-faced policemen in his If...cartoon in The Guardian, too.

Satirical TV puppet show "Spitting Image" presented graceless cabinet minister Norman (now Lord) Tebbit as a bovver-boy.

I can't find an image of my favourite Spitting Image puppet: Brylcreemed, oily Kenneth Baker as a slug on the wall of the cabinet room, leaving a trail of slime.

Baker actually wrote a book about British satirical cartooning called "From Walpole's Bottom to Major's Underpants", a perfect illustration of Gerald Scarfe's view that depicting politicians satirically only encourages the bastards.

I'll bet you anything that Baker didn't like the slug puppet, though...

Steve Bell's cartoon of the Viking funeral of John Major's underpants after his defeat at the hands of Tony Blair in the 1997 General Election.

When it became known that the former British Prime Minister habitually tucked his shirt into his underpants, Bell had a field day with variations on the image, presenting a man so useless that he wore his underpants outside his trousers.

The odd thing was that- as so often- real life proved to be more extraordinary than satire when it became known that John Major had been conducting an adulterous affair with fellow MP Edwina Currie.

If you can't keep your underpants on in the presence of Edwina Currie, your judgement HAS to be called into question.