It's Not That Long Ago

Back in the early '50s Malcolm Muggeridge (as editor of Punch) published a cartoon of Churchill (then prime minister) as a senile old man (which he was) with a caption politely suggesting it was about time he stepped down- and there was all hell to pay!

In the same era it was taboo to publish a caricature of the Queen. If you absolutely had to have her in your cartoon, it was allowable to show her from the back or with her face artfully concealed. I believe it was Gerald Scarfe in Private Eye who finally demolished that convention.

And of course cartoon representations of God and Jesus and other holy personages were absolutely unthinkable.