Fans of political cartoons are well catered for in the General Library in March with two displays on offer: one features the work of the award-winning English cartoonist Steven Bell, the other highlights cartoons by New Zealander Frank Dromgoole.

The Steve Bell cartoons display, on Level G near Lending, coincides with Bell’s time on campus under the Hood Fellowship programme. His University engagements include a public Hood lecture, Abusing power: The cartoonist in a post-truth world, and student workshops.

Bell has worked for the British newspaper The Guardian since 1981 and currently produces the paper’s daily comic strip `If’, as well as several larger editorial cartoons each week. The cartoons on display, kindly provided by Bell, span his 40-year career and reveal his keen wit and satirical eye.

The General Library display runs until 31 March while a complementary exhibition of Bell’s work at the Gus Fisher Gallery is on until 22 April.

Meanwhile, Special Collections is displaying political cartoons by Frank Swift Dromgoole (1910-1988), a Post and Telegraph Department worker and cartoonist for the People’s Voice, the Communist Party of New Zealand newspaper. These original artworks from the 1940s-50s are part of the Communist Party of New Zealand’s records (MSS & Archives A-9).

The Dromgoole cartoons can be viewed outside the Special Collections Reading Room on Level G until 31 March.