Gin Lane Gazette

Many of us think of the ill-behaved celebrity and the tabloid splash as inventions of the modern world, but the antics of Premiership footballers and C-list soap stars are as nothing when set alongside the peccadilloes and hell-raising of 18th-century celebs.

The first flowering of the great age of newspapers and caricature gave us boozy Prime Ministers and party leaders who settled their political differences with duels in Hyde Park (when they weren’t gambling, or writing essays about farting); peers of the realm who sat the unburied corpses of their cherished mistresses at their dinner tables; entertainers who rode horses standing upright in the saddle, while wearing a mask of bees; and celebrity courtesans who ate 1,000-guinea banknotes stuffed into sandwiches, simply to make a point. Before it was dashed from their lips by the Victorian party-poopers, our Georgian forebears drank deep from the cup of life.

The GIN LANE GAZETTE will be a compendium of illustrated 'best bits' from a fictional newspaper of the latter 1700s. It will contain some of the most sensational headlines and true stories of the period. The presses will be presided over by inky-fingered hack Mr. Nathaniel Crowquill, the editor and proprietor, whose premises are located in Hogarth’s chaotic Gin Lane, and who has devoted fifty years to sniffing out scandal and intrigue. His drunken acolyte, Mr. Jakes, supplies merciless caricatures and engravings for every page. Sports reports, obituaries, fashion news, courtesans of the month, book reviews, and advertisements for bizarre - and often alarming – goods, services and entertainments will also feature in a riotous mélange of metropolitan mayhem.

I have spent fifteen years producing cartoons for clients such as the Sunday Telegraph, History Today and QI, and hope to give you an authentic flavour of the exuberance, debauchery, bravery, inventiveness, and eccentricity which characterise the Georgian world.

Prithee honour this beguiling Endeavour, apt to adorn any ATHENAEUM of the Annals of Ages, with YOUR WORSHIPS’ most gracious Patronage.

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As an ankle-biter, I used to get under everyone’s feet at the Spitting Image Workshop, receiving tuition from the head caricaturist with the kind forbearance of the show’s creators, Roger Law, Peter Fluck, and TV comedy guru John Lloyd.

I paid my way through university by freelancing for various clients – including Madness – before setting up as a full-time cartoonist in 1996. At first, I concentrated mainly on work for commercial clients such as UBS, Jongleurs, and Anglia TV, and I even originated a line of sculpted, celebrity-caricature garden ornaments, which enjoyed a brief vogue.

In around 2001, I began to focus on political caricature, and cartooned for publications such as the Sunday Telegraph, the Scotsman, The Times Educational Supplement, Time Out, the Sun, and the Daily Mail.

In 2008, Fate pushed me back into the path of John Lloyd, and I produced a cover and wrote/illustrated historical spreads for various QI Annuals. This, coupled with a regular cartoon slot for History Today, set me thinking about the possibilities of popular history, and the The Gin Lane Gazette idea was born.

You can see an online portfolio of my work here I’m also on Twitter as @adeteal, and you can view my caricature posts here

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