The Press: Change of Scene

For 23 years, one of the most popular features in Lord Beaverbrook’s Conservative London Evening Standard has been the pro-Labor political cartooning of David Low. Last week, in search of “a change of scene and atmosphere,” Cartoonist Low quit the lively Standard to join Labor’s dull and pedantic Daily Herald.

The Standard (circ. 892,829) has always given Low the widest possible freedom, even to lampooning Publisher Beaverbrook himself (TIME, Dec. 29, 1947). But in recent years bushy-browed Low had come to feel that the Standard was taking him too much for granted. When the Herald (circ. 2,000,000) offered him a bigger audience, a more prominent play and a bigger promotional campaign, Low asked the Standard to release him.

Moving with Cartoonist Low from Fleet Street to Covent Garden is his entire cast of characters, including his Tory Colonel Blimp. Herald Editor Percy Cudlipp, an old friend of Low, has promised to give him the same freedom he had on the Standard. But newsmen wondered whether Labor would gain much by the shift. As one Fleet Streeter said, “Low’s preaching to the converted on the Herald, where on the Standard he got a mixed bag.”