John Donegan

About

John Peter Michael Donegan was born in Lewisham in August 1926. The eldest child of Thomas Donegan and Anne Carley, Donegan left school at 16 to join the United Dairies Engineering Company as a junior draughtsman from 1942-1945. After the war, Donegan worked in various jobs related to technical drawing and advertising, before becoming Art Director of an advertising agency, Williams & Ketchum, in 1958.

In the early 1960s he joined the Sunday Times, designing the Sunday Times magazine on it’s launch in 1962. He became a full-time cartoonist in 1975, with his cartoons appearing in Punch, Sunday Express, among others. During his career he published a number of collections of his work, including his famous dog cartoons (Dog Almighty!, Dog Help Us!, For Dog’s Sake!)

Donegan was married to Marie-Therese Le Bras, with whom he had two children (a son and a daughter). He died in Brennilis, France on 27th April 2009.