Christian Adams

Christian Adams’ Background

Christian Adams is a multi-award winning political cartoonist for the London Evening Standard and a keynote speaker.

As one of Britain’s leading political cartoonists, Christian has been drawing, doodling and caricaturing from a very young age. Drawing on the talents of his mother a professional children’s illustrator and his father an enthusiastic cartooning amateur, Christian threw himself into cartooning as his life’s true calling.

His childhood hobby soon became his life, and he couldn’t believe his luck when he realised you could make a career from it!

During his career, Christian has held many cartooning positions. A niche job, to put it mildly, Christian has managed to have full time employment cartooning for the last 35 years.

At Bristol College, studying Graphic Design, Christian swiftly gained employment drawing topical cartoons for the city’s listings guide. He passed the degree with a 2:2. The examiners said that unfortunately he was “too limited to cartooning.” He took that as a compliment.

The moment he left, he was recommended by the legendary Trog (Wally Fawkes) to stand in for him doing profile caricatures at The Observer.

With a portfolio that was getting fatter and fatter with cartoons done for Time Out, Solicitors’ Journal, Private Eye, Radio Times among many others, the London Evening Standard were impressed enough to quickly put him on staff as their in-house Features Cartoonist. He had to be on call for five editions a day, with deadlines sometimes right down to 45 minutes.

After 12 years, he moved to The Daily Telegraph, were he took over from Nick Garland as their Political Cartoonist. He had to think up five ideas, get one picked by the editor and then draw up a full cartoon every day of the week.

In 2017, George Osborne became editor of the London Evening Standard and immediately poached him from the Telegraph. His deadlines there are even tighter, arriving at work at 6am and having to turn around that day’s political cartoon by the 10.30am deadline. His office colleagues are now used to the regular sound of his hairdryer frantically drying wet ink!

Christian has won awards for his work including being voted Cartoonist of the Year by The Cartoon Art Trust (2015) and voted Cartoonist of the Year by The Political Cartoon Society (2015).

As a speaker, he talks about his exclusive behind-the-scenes experience, working in both newspapers and politics. He explains the high-profile and high excitement role as a daily newspaper political cartoonist and satirist, working to extremely tight deadlines. He also discusses his unique views and gossip from behind the doors of British politics.

Christian hopes that his cartoons will make readers think as well as laugh.