Steve Bell in-conversation with William Feaver
Steve Bell is an award winning English political cartoonist, whose work appears in The Guardian and other publications.
Steve Bell is an award winning English political cartoonist, whose work appears in The Guardian and other publications. Born in Walthamstow, London, and raised in Slough, Bell moved to North Yorkshire with his family in 1968, where he trained as an artist at the Teesside College of Art. He graduated in Filmmaking and Art from the University of Leeds in 1974 and trained as an Art teacher at St Luke's College, Exeter. He taught for one year in Birmingham before becoming a freelance cartoonist in 1977. His comic strip Maggie's Farm appeared in Time Out from 1979 and later in City Limits, and Lord God Almighty appeared in The Leveller in the 1970s.
Steve Bell is probably best known for the daily strip called If..., which has appeared in The Guardian newspaper since 1981, he is also the newspaper's principal editorial cartoonist. Bell's parodies often reference art including Goya's The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, William Hogarth's The Gate of Calais and J. M. W. Turner's The Fighting Temeraire.