As I Please

British satirist and cartoonist Martin Rowson’s acerbic chronicles of the evolution—or rather, regression—of politics in the last two decades.

In 1997, on top of his regular visual contributions to the Tribune, Martin Rowson—the veteran mouthpiece of the Left of the British Labour Party—started writing a monthly column in the paper’s ‘As I Please’ section, which was George Orwell’s slot fifty years earlier. Through his columns, Rowson chronicled the changing tides and tsunamis in the current political scene, documenting the rise of nationalism and the right wing in these prescient musings. Over the next two decades, he pondered everything—the ideological battles inside Labour, the psychopathology of the Tory Party, the London Zoo, the British class system, Doctor Who, terrorism—and anything else that came to mind a day or so before the deadline.

Here, for the first time, a selection of these columns has been collected alongside Rowson’s other textual journalism, from tiny underground magazines in the United States to contributions to the Guardian, the Independent, and many other mainstream publications, on subjects ranging from the Charlie Hebdo massacre to his favourite books.

‘[O]pens up a treasure trove of caustically acerbic railings against the wrongs of the world . . . . It’s a freewheeling, sometimes revelatory and irreverent swing at events with the power to wrench the reader into confrontation with uncomfortable realities, or offer copious treasurable gems.’—Chris McLaughlin, Tribune