Posters

Looking at Barnett Freedman makes me weep at the government's dismal graphics

15 August 2020 9:00 am

Among the spoils of a lockdown clear-out was a box of my grandmother’s books: Woolf, Austen, Mitford and The Complete…

Going to the wall: ‘Jane Avril’, 1899, by Henri Toulouse-Lautrec

Lautrec often made the stars in his posters look appalling – but they kept coming back

20 October 2018 9:00 am

You don’t need to be much of a psychologist to understand the trajectory of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Born to aristocratic…

‘Regent’s Park Zoo’, 1930, by Arnrid Banniza Johnston

The forgotten history of the Tube’s ‘poster girls’

4 November 2017 9:00 am

Every weekday, I travel by Tube to The Spectator’s office, staring at the posters plastered all over the walls. I…

‘Soviet Union Art Exhibition’, Zurich 1931, by Valentina Kulagina

The art of persuasion

28 October 2017 9:00 am

It’s hard to admire communist art with an entirely clear conscience. The centenary of the October revolution, which falls this…

Letters: In defence of Italy, and the rise and fall of the military moustache

1 November 2014 9:00 am

Italy’s to-do list Sir: You would expect a long letter of rebuttal by a piqued senior diplomat in response to…

What are 16-year-olds supposed to learn by making posters?

25 October 2014 9:00 am

My niece, Lara, 15, has a mind like a surgical blade. On any subject, from calculus to The X Factor,…