The Guardian's political cartoonist, Les Gibbard, is remembered by the founder of the New Zealand Cartoon Archive as one of the English-speaking world's most sharp-edged cartoonists and one who did not fit in with conservative New Zealand newspapers of the 1960s.
Kaiapoi-born Gibbard, who was cartoonist for the left-leaning Guardian for 25 years, died on Sunday at the age of 64.
He worked for a number of New Zealand and Australian publications during the 1960s before he moved to London and was initially employed by The Daily Telegraph before joining The Guardian in 1969.
Ian F Grant, who found the NZ Cartoon Archive at the Alexander Turnbull Library, said there were interesting connections between Les Gibbard and David Low, New Zealand's most famous expatriate cartoonist.
Low had tried to entice Gordon Minhinnick, The New Zealand Herald's long-serving cartoonist to London to take over from him at the Evening Standard in the late 1940s.
Minhinnick turned down one of Fleet Street's prime cartooning spots to stay in Auckland but, a decade later, encouraged his young protege, Gibbard, to try his luck in London. Some years later, Minhinnick was delighted when Gibbard was appointed political cartoonist at The Guardian, where Low had been for 10 years until his death in 1963.
Gibbard was only 23, the newspaper's youngest-ever cartoonist, and he stayed for a quarter of a century.
"He was, during those years, unquestionably one of the English-speaking world's most effective, sharp-edged cartoonists," Grant said.
"I remember interviewing Gibbard while researching my first cartoon history of New Zealand, The Unauthorised Version. He told me why he'd left New Zealand."
As he put it: "The ex-service mentality - the 'get your hair cut boy' and the 'boss is always right' approach - would have meant my career as a staff cartoonist would have been extremely short in most conservative New Zealand newspaper offices. I was doing anti-Vietnam and anti-red-baiting cartoons for the Sunday News at a time when that stand was not so popular and I wouldn't have been happy following the majority line that other papers would have demanded."
Grant subsequently visited Gibbard on visits to Britain.
"He had come back to New Zealand on several occasions in the early days with the idea of staying, making animated cartoons and freelancing for newspapers," says Grant.
"This was during the final, rather dreary Callaghan years in Britain, but then Margaret Thatcher won the election in 1979 and Gibbard was keen to be back in London, 'hammering the hell out of the Conservatives', as he put it."
During the late 1980s, Mike Robson, then managing director of the INL newspaper group, tried to lure Gibbard, an old friend, back to Wellington and to the Evening Post when Nevile Lodge was close to retirement. He came back briefly and a few Gibbard cartoons appeared in the paper, but it was not to be.
The Guardian said that throughout the terms of prime ministers Harold Wilson, Edward Heath, Callaghan, Thatcher and John Major, his incisive daily pictorial commentaries gave readers a unique slant on world history.
He courted controversy during the Falklands War with a re-working of a World War 2 cartoon, re-captioned as "The price of sovereignty has increased - official", after a Royal Navy submarine sank the Argentinian battleship Belgrano with the loss of 323 lives in 1982.
Then prime minister Mrs Thatcher cited the cartoon as evidence the British media did not support military action, while The Sun newspaper accused Gibbard and The Guardian of treason.
Gibbard contributed to several international animated features, including Under Milk Wood and Ivor the Invisible, as well as TV adaptations of the Beatrix Potter stories and The Wind in the Willows.
He died suddenly after a routine operation. He is survived by Susan, his wife of 32 years.
NZPA