Fleet Street has been a magnet for journalists around the globe ever since the world's first daily newspaper, the Daily Courant, was published in London on 11 March 1702. Amongst the foreign journalists who have come to Britain over the past 300 years have been a number of cartoonists and caricaturists, especially after the launch of the satirical magazine Punch in 1841.
Attupurathu Mathew Abraham ('Abu') arrived in London in 1953 for what he intended to be a three-month visit, and eventually stayed on for 16 years. He started his London career as the first-ever political cartoonist on the Observer, the oldest Sunday newspaper in the world, founded in 1791. He later worked for three years on the leftwing weekly Tribune; and from 1966 to 1969, he was also a daily 'pocket' (single-column) cartoonist for the Guardian, which described him as "the conscience of the Left and the pea under the princess's mattress".
Abu came to Britain at the suggestion of Fred Joss, the political cartoonist and caricaturist of the London evening paper, the Star. In 1953, after working for the Star for 20 years, Joss came to Delhi on a business trip and sought out the celebrated Indian cartoonist Shankar. He found him in the offices of Shankar's Weekly, where Abu had himself been working for the previous two years. Shankar introduced Joss to Abu, who showed him some of his work. Joss was immediately struck by the quality of the drawings, and encouraged Abu to try his luck in London.
Abu thus set sail for Liverpool in July 1953. He arrived three weeks later and took a train to London where he stayed with a friend. Here, he soon began to contribute to a number of publications. His first cartoon for Punch was published almost exactly 55 years ago, on 4 November 1953. Realising that he could make a living in Britain, Abu decided to stay on. In 1956, Michael Foot, the future leader of the Labour Party but then the editor of Tribune, published two of his political cartoons. Within a week of their appearance, Abu was invited to become staff political cartoonist for the Observer, the first ever in its 165-year history.