Carl Giles was an exception. As a cartoonist, he was seldom political, never brash, not clever-clever and a pretty poor caricaturist. He had many contemporaries who could do all of this, like Ronald Searle, Ralph Steadman and Gerald Scarfe. Instead, he devoted his life to the man in the street, and the extended Giles Family. These extended families had their roots after World War 2 when many British families were bombed out and had to tolerate each other under one roof.
All human life is here.
Giles started out as an animator, later moving on to Reynold's News as a highly sylised, American influenced cartoonist. During the war he became a semi-official war cartoonist. In the post-war years, he drew cartoons for the London Daily Express. It's interesting to look at the early work, and watch his style, the Giles Family and mischevious and sometimes mordant sense of humour emerge. Now there are many other artists who have produced cartoons based on families and situations, and many others with Giles's sense of the absurd.