David Austin was born in in Lavendon, Buckinghamshire in 1935, the elder of two children of Jack and Toni Austin. The family moved near to Southend-on-Sea soon after his birth and David attended Southend High School for Boys. He went on to study Chemistry at Leicester University and spent his National Service in the RAF. His first job was as an industrial chemist but he resigned in 1966 to re-train as a teacher and went on to work in two primary schools in London. In 1970 he began to draw the 'Hom Sap' cartoon strip for Private Eye which ran for 35 years and he became a full-time cartoonist in 1976, having resigned as a teacher in 1974. He founded a comic magazine called 'Duck Soup' with cartoonists Kipper Williams and Tom Johnston in 1978 and later worked for Today, Mail on Sunday, The Spectator and Daily Telegraph before moving to the Guardian in 1990. At the Guardian he produced a daily front-page pocket cartoon and later an additional drawing for the letters page. His last cartoon for the Guardian was published on 28 October 2005.
From the guide to the Original artwork of David Austin, 1985-2005, (Guardian News & Media Archive)
