CARTOONIST Chris Cairns has released a second anthology of his work – covering “unprecedented political turmoil”.
The illustrator says Send In The Clowns “charts the Anglo-American world’s collective loss of marbles”, taking in the Brexit vote and ascent of Donald Trump from reality TV host to the White House.
Taking off where the artist’s first anthology Welcome to Cairnstoon ends, the new release features work published on pro-indy websites Wings Over Scotland and Bella Caledonia since 2015.
It retains a strong focus on domestic affairs, going “from the election of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader to just days before Kezia Dugdale resigned as leader of Labour Party in Scotland”.
Other famous faces featured include Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson and David Davis. Featuring a foreword by The National columnist Paul Kavanagh, also known as Wee Ginger Dug, the title has been published following a successful crowdfunder on the Indiegogo platform, which secured 180 per cent of its target.
Appealing to backers, publisher Greg Moodie placed Cairns’s work at the centre of efforts to interpret and explain the “twists and turns” that have occurred since the 2014 independence referendum.
He said: “If everything had gone to the Unionist plan, the last couple of years would have been recorded in Scottish history as the Great Anti-climax – a painful yet necessary coming to terms again with our substandard and subordinate role in the UK after getting that silly independence nonsense out of our system. But it didn’t quite pan out that way.
“At times, the road to self-determination has seemed longer than we’d hoped, sometimes shorter – we’ve certainly had to negotiate a few twists and turns we hadn’t seen coming. But a road there most certainly still is.”
Commenting on the release, which also features Cairns’s character Hamish the Lion, Moodie said the project had been “demanding”, but added: “I admit this book is a beauty and was worth all the effort.”
Kavanagh said: “Chris’s cartoons are a weekly exercise in bursting the bubble of Scotland’s Unionist establishment.”
The book, available in both hardback and paperback, is available to buy from www.cairnstoon.com.
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