'A Bishop of Decision' — Cosmo Gordon Lang, Bishop of Stepney

Spy depicts Cosmo Gordon Lang — then Bishop of Stepney, later Archbishop of Canterbury — in three-quarter profile, adjusting a pectoral cross over his dark frock coat and clerical collar, gaitered legs planted with quiet confidence. The subtitle The Bishop of Stepney anchors the figure; the caption 'A Bishop of Decision' is a pointed compliment: Lang had made a conspicuous name working among East London's poor, combining Anglo-Catholic ceremonial with muscular social engagement, which made him alternately admired and suspect among Evangelicals. Ward's caricature is unusually restrained — the face barely distorted — lending Lang an almost photographic authority that itself argues the subject's rising political weight within the Edwardian Church.