Albert Edgar Beard

About

A. E. Beard was born in Birmingham on 16 January 1902. He studied at the Birmingham School of Art, and with Percy Bradshaw. He first contributed a cartoon to Punch in 1927, and the association continued for fifty years. During World War II he served in the Intelligence Corps, interpreting aerial photographs.

Beard’s cartoons also appeared in Answers, John Bull, Everybody’s, Daily Mirror, Illustrated, Recorder (“Brave New World” series, c. 1946), London Opinion, Reveille, Tit-Bits, Evening Standard, Blighty, Daily Graphic, Humorist, Passing Show, Daily Sketch, New Scientist and Procurement Weekly (for ten years). He was political cartoonist on the Sunday Chronicle, and created a popular strip about a family of TV addicts – “The Gaisby-Knights” – which ran from 1958 to 1960. Beard also drew under the name “Harvey” and designed advertisements for Standard Fireworks, Oxo, Madame Tussaud’s, Pelmanism and others. He died on 3 May 1991.

Holdings

18 uncatalogued originals [PU0091 – 0108] (1967)

References used in biography

  • Mark Bryant Dictionary of Twentieth-Century British Cartoonists and Caricaturists (Ashgate, Aldershot, 2000), pp.16-17.

Active Period

1950-1999

Status

Featured in BCA collections

Nationality

British cartoonists

Publisher

PunchDaily MirrorEvening StandardDaily Sketch