George 'Sidney' Strube

Artwork, letters, photos, menus, programmes, cuttings and an object.

Includes 30 boxes of artwork from the Beaverbrook Foundation cartoon collection.

Available for consultation at the University of Kent's Special Collections & Archives reading room, Templeman Library, University of Kent, Canterbury, CT2 7NU (specialcollections@kent.ac.uk).

Sidney 'George' Strube?s early work was published in the Conservative & Unionist, Bystander, Evening Times and Throne and Country. When the latter magazine refused one of his drawings he took it to the Daily Express who published it and in 1912 employed Strube on an exclusive contract as the paper?s political cartoonist until 1948. During the First World War, Strube served with the Artists? Rifles. His ?little man? with his umbrella, pince-nez glasses, bow tie and bowler hat, was meant to represent the man in the street, ?trying to keep his ear to the ground, his nose to the grindstone, his eye to the future and his chin up ? all at the same time?, as Strube himself said. In 1931, Strube became the highest paid journalist in Fleet Street on a salary of £10,000 a year. See Strube biography by Timothy S. Benson.

The Beaverbrook Foundation holds what is widely regarded as one of the most important collections of over 8,000 twentieth century British political cartoons, includng work by David Low, Victor Weisz (Vicky), Michael Cummings and Sidney Strube. The collection is currently on loan to the British Cartoon Archive at the University of Kent.