George Cruikshank - illustrator of Oliver Twist
Martin Attridge
- Regions:
- Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Essex, London
- Notice Period:
- Short (maybe less than one month's notice)
- Type:
- Hobby
- Fee:
- Paid: £60 for up to 40 people, rising to £100 for 90
- Category:
- Humanities
- Updated:
- 16th April 2026
- Tagged:
- Satire | Book Illustration | Fairy Tales | Temperance
- Son of a famous caricaturist, who himself started as a satirist before turning to book illustration
- Produced about 10,000 images in a very long career of over 60 years from the early 19th century
- Worked with many famous authors of his day including Dickens, Walter Scott and Ainsworth
- Strongly opinionated, he rejected opportunities with Punch magazine to focus on his own periodical
- Illustrated with his original prints and pictures from many famous books for children and adults
About Martin Attridge
- I have lived in Harpenden, Hertfordshire for the past 42 years.
- Following a career spent mainly as a commercial training consultant, I looked for other subjects in retirement to occupy my time.
- I decided to research and develop a range of History and Art short talks and they are all very well received.
- Now, I have decided to focus on a small range of six subjects: William Hogarth - one of, if not, the finest English artist of any age who devised a new genre of painting and prints ; George Cruikshank - who made the transition from biting satire to book illustration, working with Charles Dickens amongst many other; Snippets from the Eighteenth Century looking at five key and unusual events from the 1700s; The Development of English Silver Hallmarks - originatiing in 1300 and illustrated with a number of silver objects; Beguiling Bygones Quizzes - ideally for a group size of 20 to 30, examining commonplace objects from the past and attempting to identify them; plus Len - my ex-racing greyhound, to raise funds for Whittingham Kennels, the charity who first gave him a home post-retirement; .
- With delivery using PowerPoint a handout can additionally be provided for each participant to take away, capturing the key points from each session.
Other Talks on SpeakerNet by Martin Attridge
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