Giles, the Cartoonist
Giles, the cartoonist – a Barnsbury alumnus
The well known and respected newspaper cartoonist, Giles, once studied at Barnsbury Park School, a forerunner to Barnsbury School for Boys. Here is an article about Giles, his upbringing and school life. Parts of the text are taken from “The Giles Family” by Peter Tory.
Ronald Giles - “Carl” being only a nickname - was born above a tobacconist shop in Islington, London, on 29 September 1916. It was a very urban beginning, but, as he later explained, he had rural origins, for “my father comes from a family of Newmarket jockeys and my mother from a family of Norfolk farmers”. His paternal grandfather, Alfred “Farmer” Giles, was indeed a well-known Newmarket jockey of the 1880s, who rode for the Prince of Wales, whilst his father, Albert “Berty” Giles, had also been a jockey, before retiring to run the shop where Giles was born. They were both small, and Giles joked that the entire Giles family could “walk under the table without bending down and put their hats on a chair.”
Giles’ mother Emma came from Norfolk, and his maternal grandmother, “Nanny Clarke”, still lived on the outskirts of Norwich. Giles spent a lot of time there as a boy, and remembered Nanny Clarke with affection as “a really colourful woman”: “far more extrovert than Grandma Giles and she had such a happy little house.” Some of his mother’s cousins also had a farm at Lingwood, near Norwich, and Giles recalled as a child spending “some of my happiest days” there. “I used to spend so much time up in Norwich at my grandmother’s house that I went to school up there.” He enjoyed his time at the Willow Lane Roman Catholic school. He always felt at home in East Anglia, and in later life was described as having a “curious broad Cockney-Suffolk accent.”
Giles spent a lot of his early life around Islington. “My father was a popular man who didn’t say much,” Giles recalled, “but when he did he could be very funny”. “He ran a couple of tobacconist shops in Islington and the Barbican, and all his friends would go in there and treat the place like a club.” Berty Giles had hoped that his son would follow the family profession by becoming a jockey, but, as Giles recalled, he proved a disappointment “by going overweight at an early age and sprouting to an impossible stature of five-ten.” However, he did inherit a love of horses, and liked to ride.
Giles was also member of a class which was presided over by the frightening schoolmaster, Chalkie. Chalkie – or Mr. Chalk, as he was named – was the only human character who was drawn, with as much ill-natured accuracy as Giles could muster, from reality. In that class there were evidently memorable characters who, through fear, ruled the playground and the surrounding streets. “One of them was Georgie Smith and the other was Arthur Elkington”, recalls Giles, who was a short-haired, bespectacled kid not noted for a muscular frame or a way with his fists.
Giles’ cartoons of school life drew on his time at Barnsbury Park School in London, to which he later returned. Giles remembered this as “a large red box in a square of asphalt”, and depicted it as a kind of prison, where unruly inner-city children were kept in order by the iron discipline of their autocratic teacher Mr. Chalk, whom they called Chalky – “but only behind his back.”
Giles recalled Chalky as “a tall man, like a skeleton, and he had a head like a skull.” He drew him in more than a hundred and sixty cartoons, and recalled him ruling by fear, for “in his class you weren’t allowed to make a sound. Even if you were dying to go to the toilet you couldn’t ask.” Chalky maintained order with the cane and the punishment book, and Giles remembered that “you knew about it all right when he used the cane.” “You got six on the palm and you couldn’t use your hand for weeks.” Yet he confessed that “it wasn’t the beatings we minded – you were practically an outcast if you didn’t get a wallop on your bum – it was the sarcasm we dreaded most.”
“He was a sarcastic bugger,” Giles recalled of Mr. Chalk. “When we came creeping in to the classroom a bit late he would he would take his glasses off and say with that terrible sarcasm: ‘How nice of you to join us.’” “Ooh, he was a cruel man. I vowed to get my own back, and I did.”
Through the cartoon figure of “Chalky” – sometimes spelled “Chalkie” – this sarcastic manner became as familiar to readers as it had been to the young Giles himself. “If Mr. Giles would kindly come to the front of the class, place the gobstopper he is sucking in the wastepaper basket, and hand me that intriguing piece of literature he is composing under his desk, I shall be delighted to read it aloud to the rest of the class.”
In reality he was William James Chalk MA, who taught the 12-year-old Giles. Both the character and its model were masters of sarcasm but whereas the former would relax by reading Hanging for Beginners, the latter was remembered fondly by Giles as having "a kind of warmth about him.”
Peter Tory, biographer, gives 1927 as the year in which Giles (aged 11) was in Chalky’s class, also writing that he taught him for only two terms.
The well known and respected newspaper cartoonist, Giles, once studied at Barnsbury Park School, a forerunner to Barnsbury School for Boys. Here is an article about Giles, his upbringing and school life. Parts of the text are taken from “The Giles Family” by Peter Tory.
Ronald Giles - “Carl” being only a nickname - was born above a tobacconist shop in Islington, London, on 29 September 1916. It was a very urban beginning, but, as he later explained, he had rural origins, for “my father comes from a family of Newmarket jockeys and my mother from a family of Norfolk farmers”. His paternal grandfather, Alfred “Farmer” Giles, was indeed a well-known Newmarket jockey of the 1880s, who rode for the Prince of Wales, whilst his father, Albert “Berty” Giles, had also been a jockey, before retiring to run the shop where Giles was born. They were both small, and Giles joked that the entire Giles family could “walk under the table without bending down and put their hats on a chair.”
Giles’ mother Emma came from Norfolk, and his maternal grandmother, “Nanny Clarke”, still lived on the outskirts of Norwich. Giles spent a lot of time there as a boy, and remembered Nanny Clarke with affection as “a really colourful woman”: “far more extrovert than Grandma Giles and she had such a happy little house.” Some of his mother’s cousins also had a farm at Lingwood, near Norwich, and Giles recalled as a child spending “some of my happiest days” there. “I used to spend so much time up in Norwich at my grandmother’s house that I went to school up there.” He enjoyed his time at the Willow Lane Roman Catholic school. He always felt at home in East Anglia, and in later life was described as having a “curious broad Cockney-Suffolk accent.”
Giles spent a lot of his early life around Islington. “My father was a popular man who didn’t say much,” Giles recalled, “but when he did he could be very funny”. “He ran a couple of tobacconist shops in Islington and the Barbican, and all his friends would go in there and treat the place like a club.” Berty Giles had hoped that his son would follow the family profession by becoming a jockey, but, as Giles recalled, he proved a disappointment “by going overweight at an early age and sprouting to an impossible stature of five-ten.” However, he did inherit a love of horses, and liked to ride.
Giles was also member of a class which was presided over by the frightening schoolmaster, Chalkie. Chalkie – or Mr. Chalk, as he was named – was the only human character who was drawn, with as much ill-natured accuracy as Giles could muster, from reality. In that class there were evidently memorable characters who, through fear, ruled the playground and the surrounding streets. “One of them was Georgie Smith and the other was Arthur Elkington”, recalls Giles, who was a short-haired, bespectacled kid not noted for a muscular frame or a way with his fists.
Giles’ cartoons of school life drew on his time at Barnsbury Park School in London, to which he later returned. Giles remembered this as “a large red box in a square of asphalt”, and depicted it as a kind of prison, where unruly inner-city children were kept in order by the iron discipline of their autocratic teacher Mr. Chalk, whom they called Chalky – “but only behind his back.”
Giles recalled Chalky as “a tall man, like a skeleton, and he had a head like a skull.” He drew him in more than a hundred and sixty cartoons, and recalled him ruling by fear, for “in his class you weren’t allowed to make a sound. Even if you were dying to go to the toilet you couldn’t ask.” Chalky maintained order with the cane and the punishment book, and Giles remembered that “you knew about it all right when he used the cane.” “You got six on the palm and you couldn’t use your hand for weeks.” Yet he confessed that “it wasn’t the beatings we minded – you were practically an outcast if you didn’t get a wallop on your bum – it was the sarcasm we dreaded most.”
“He was a sarcastic bugger,” Giles recalled of Mr. Chalk. “When we came creeping in to the classroom a bit late he would he would take his glasses off and say with that terrible sarcasm: ‘How nice of you to join us.’” “Ooh, he was a cruel man. I vowed to get my own back, and I did.”
Through the cartoon figure of “Chalky” – sometimes spelled “Chalkie” – this sarcastic manner became as familiar to readers as it had been to the young Giles himself. “If Mr. Giles would kindly come to the front of the class, place the gobstopper he is sucking in the wastepaper basket, and hand me that intriguing piece of literature he is composing under his desk, I shall be delighted to read it aloud to the rest of the class.”
In reality he was William James Chalk MA, who taught the 12-year-old Giles. Both the character and its model were masters of sarcasm but whereas the former would relax by reading Hanging for Beginners, the latter was remembered fondly by Giles as having "a kind of warmth about him.”
Peter Tory, biographer, gives 1927 as the year in which Giles (aged 11) was in Chalky’s class, also writing that he taught him for only two terms.