Steve Bell

Steven William Maclean Bell is an English political cartoonist, whose work has appeared in a number of publications, notably The Guardian from 1981 to 2023. He is known for his left-wing views. Bell was fired from The Guardian in 2023, after drawing a caricature of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, during the Hamas-Israel war. Early life Born in Walthamstow and raised in Slough, Bell moved with his family in 1968 to North Yorkshire, where he trained as an artist at the Teesside College of Art. He graduated in film-making and art from the University of Leeds in 1974 and trained as an art teacher at St Luke's College, Exeter (now St Luke's Campus at the University of Exeter), in 1975. He taught art for one year in Birmingham, before resigning to become a freelance cartoonist in 1977. Cartoonist While still teaching, Bell did unpaid work providing the magazine Birmingham Broadside with illustrations, including a comic strip featuring Maxwell the Mutant who changed into someone different every time he drank a pint of mild. He had been a friend at university with another student, Kipper Williams, who had become a freelance cartoonist. Bell followed his lead, and some contacts, and despite rejections including being turned down for The Beano he persevered and obtained paid work for part of 1978 with the comic strip Dick Doobie the Back to Front Man for Whoopee!. He made repeated attempts to get work in the London listings magazine Time Out.