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Steadman is fond of saying that he set out to change the world and failed. “If anything,” this most self-deprecating of artists will then tell you, “I made it worse.” His popular success as a political satirist and his extraordinary illustrations has been for such diverse writers as Lewis Carroll, Flann O’Brien and Steadman’s spiritual brother Hunter S. Thompson. Steadman is renowned for the merciless brutality in many of his paintings; notably his images of Vietnam, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, his horrific pictures of London in the plague year, and his scatological and unflattering portraits of leaders such as Nixon, Thatcher, Blair and Trump. During the 1960s he also began to create illustrated books for both children and adults. His award-winning 1967 version of Lewis Carroll’s classic Alice in Wonderland was followed five years later by the even more striking Through the Looking-Glass

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