Lord Grimthorpe

Leslie Ward ('Spy') renders Edmund Beckett, 1st Baron Grimthorpe — barrister, clockmaker, and famously abrasive controversialist — as a bull-necked, corpulent figure slumped in a salmon-pink armchair, arms folded, a top hat resting beside him on the seat. The caption 'Bells' nods to Grimthorpe's obsessive campanology: he redesigned the mechanism governing Big Ben's great bell and was a dogmatic authority on church bells and clock chimes. Ward's caricature exaggerates his stocky, self-satisfied bulk and jutting profile to capture a man notorious for bullying architects, litigating relentlessly, and imposing his own restoration on St Albans Cathedral over professional protest. No ethnic caricature is present; the comedy is purely one of class arrogance made physical.