A rash of satirical journals hit the streets of Birmingham from the 1860s onwards. Their full page political cartoons, drawn by, amongst others, G.H. Bernasconi and E.J. Mountford, attracted much attention in the town and beyond. 'Birmingham is becoming famous for its cartoons', one of the satirical magazines observed. Birmingham was an intensely politically partisan town and the source of many key develop-ments and controversies in the Victorian and Edwardian period. Inevitably Joseph Chamberlain figures prominently in this selection. But, as the exasperated George Dixon once burst out, to...