Fougasse

Who was Fougasse?

Cyril Kenneth Bird, pen name Fougasse was a British cartoonist best known for his editorship of Punch magazine and his World War II warning propaganda posters. He also designed many posters for the London Underground.

The son of Arthur Bird, a company director, he was educated at Cheltenham College and King's College London. While at King's College he attended evening art classes at the Regent Street Polytechnic and at the School of Photo-Engraving in Bolt Court. On 16 Sep 1914 he married Mary Holden Caldwell.

He was seriously injured at the Battle of Gallipoli during World War I and invalided out of the British Army. He first contributed to Punch in 1916, while convalescing, and also contributed to several other British newspapers and magazines, including the Graphic and Tatler.

As one of the best known cartoonists of the time, he created an illustrated verse tale, written on postage stamp-sized pages exclusively for Queen Mary's dolls' house. The miniature book has been sitting alongside 170 other authors' doll-sized volumes within the dolls' house's library for 90 years. The Royal Collection and publisher Walker Books made the miniature tale into a regular-sized hardback for public sale, in May 2012.