THE BEST GEORGE CRUIKSHANK print is, of course, the one he captioned “A radical reformer … a neck or nothing man!” A vast, anthropomorphic, fire-breathing guillotine, dripping with blood and wearing a liberty cap, lumbers towards Britain’s governing class, which scatters before it (below). Made in 1819, the image distils anxieties about post-Napoleonic political pollution. Combining Blakean imagination, powerful draftsmanship, and genuine insight into the Channel-crossing forces re-shaping the country, it is the peak of a junction between prints and politics unique in British history.
George pushed forward a tradition inherited from his father Isaac Cruikshank, and Isaac’s peers James Gillray and Thomas Rowlandson. Their dense, scabrous, artistically bold, and sometimes surreal images from
