Carl Giles Trust Collection

The entire studio archive of cartoonist Carl Giles (1916-1995), one of the most significant archives of British political and social cartoons.

This extensive collection contains around 6500 original artworks, as well as reference files, business and personal correspondence, books, personal papers, studio objects and toys, and more.

Giles died in August 1995, and under his will his entire studio archive and related material from Giles' home passed to a group of Cartoon Trustees. This material remained in storage until September 2005, when the Trustees transferred the Giles archive to the British Cartoon Archive at the University of Kent.

See our Carl Giles biography.

Collection in brief

Contents: Artwork, correspondence, papers, photographs, books, film, objects, cuttings
Period: 1913-1995

Browse the collection More about Giles

A black and white photograph of Giles working at his easel in his early career.

British Cartoon Archive Digitisation Project

In 2008 the Univeristy of Kent embarked on a project to digitise the Giles collection as part of the British Cartoon Archive Digitisation Project, supported by funding from Jisc. The project significantly increased the archives accessibility and usability, bringing the metadata of the entire collection in line with international standards of the time.

Thanks to this funding, staff, students and researchers at colleges and universities in the UK are able to access and use the entire Giles Collection of 15,000 cartoon images, with some 5,000 pages of related paperwork, free of charge for educational purposes.