Nicola Jennings [Nicola]

About

Nicola Jennings was born in London on 10 September 1958. Brought up in the family home of Babington House, in Somerset, her maternal grandfather was Christopher Hollis MP, a contributor to Punch.

Educated at St Mary's School, Ascot, Jennings attended Taunton Art School from 1976 to 1977, and from 1977 to 1980 studied theatre design at Wimbledon School of Art. She spent most of the next decade working backstage in the theatre and illustrating books, but in 1987 began caricature work for the London Daily News. Here she had a daily spot, but when the paper closed after five months she moved to the Daily Mirror, where she drew caricatures for the television pages, as well as working for the Sunday Times.

Jennings stopped working for the Daily Mirror in 1996, but has worked for the Observer since 1990, the Guardian since 1991, and also for Prospect magazine. Specialising in political caricature, she observed in 1997 that Peter Mandelson was "the only person vain enough ever to have complained to me about being lampooned."

Jennings' television work has included Channel 4's A Week in Politics (1995-7) and President Blair (1999), and BBC2's The Midnight Hour (1994), Peering Into Europe (1997), and The Year in 1998 (1998). Influenced by Hogarth, Edward Lear, Beardsley and Scarfe, she uses a dip pen and ink on paper, and for television draws on a computer, transferring the results to Betacam.

• Evening Standard, 30 July 1997, p.10, "Face Facts."
• Philippa Stockley "The House-Warming", Evening Standard, 4 November 1998, p.22.
• Mark Bryant Dictionary of Twentieth-Century British Cartoonists and Caricaturists (Ashgate, Aldershot, 2000), pp.125-6.
• Nicola Jennings' website at www.nicolajennings.co.uk
• GNM resource of the month Feb 2015 The Guardian

Holdings

Description

2 unaccessioned originals

Date

21/4/97 & 26/1/99