About
Rex Audley was born in Cobridge in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire in 1927. He was educated at Wolstanton County Grammar School from 1938 to 1945, where he "frequently drew blackboard cartoons of members of staff that were accurate and affectionate". After doing his National Service in India, Audley studied at Corpus Christi College, Oxford from 1948 to 1951, and as an undergraduate was art editor of Isis from 1950 to 1951, also supplying the magazine with cartoons.
Audley was self-taught as an artist, but shortly after graduating accepted a job as editorial cartoonist on the Daily Mail, where he spent six months in 1952. He subsequently freelanced for a number of newspapers, including the News Chronicle, Daily Sketch, and Daily and Sunday Telegraph - for which he first worked in 1960, and for which he supplied topical news and sports cartoons from 1966 to 1993. He also contributed to the Times Educational Supplement, Age Care and The Cricketer International, as well as working for the advertising agency The Creative Business, formed in 1972.
Audley had a lifelong love of France, and his wife, Claudie Fetcherin, was French. While freelancing, Audley also worked as a teacher of modern languages, and spent ten years at Selhurst Grammar School for Boys, in Croydon, leaving in 1969. During his teaching he made extensive use of illustration.
Audley worked in pen and ink or felt tip. He died in March 2005.
- Information on Audley's time at Selhurst from Malcolm Stringer, and www.theoldcroydonians.org.uk/
- "Rex Audley, 1927-2005" at www.scssc.co.uk/Features/Misc_RexAudley.htm
back to top