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The man famed for his venomous nib, the legendary cartoonist and designer tells his life story for the first time, encompassing sweeping social changes in the 1960s and beyond. For more than half a century, Gerald Scarfe's work graced the Sunday Times, Evening Standard, New Yorker, Private Eye and Time magazine. He has been rude on the walls of the V&A and the Tate, the stages of the English National Opera and the English National Ballet, and captivated cinema audiences around the world in the form of Pink Floyd The Wall and Disney's Hercules. Here he takes us back to his wartime childhood and the terrible curse of asthma, through his days as an advertising draughtsman to his field reporting in Vietnam and the giddy highs of rock 'n' roll. It is a very personal, wickedly funny and caustically insightful account of contemporary culture and society. In 1964 as a young artist, he sat in the Public Gallery of the House of Commons, sketching former Prime Minister Winston Churchill. The Times, who had commissioned it, refused to print the resulting drawing of this frail, aged figure - it was too truthful. Private Eye finally used it for a front cover. Scarfe reveals the process of cartooning, and ways the certain subjects have reacted to his visions of them. Along the way he has been car-jacked in Derry, dined with royals and thoroughly upset Mrs Mary Whitehouse. He has produced the iconic images of Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister and had exhibitions of his paintings and drawings at the Tate, the NPG and the Smithsonian NPG. A national treasure and a genius, he is married to the beautiful Jane Asher and includes here pictures of his great friend Ronald Searle with him in Provence after enjoying a bottle of 'engine oil'. A watercolour of a house where he was treated for asthma, his zany depiction of Margaret Thatcher as a Torydactyl, on location for filming Pink Floyd The Wall in 1981, filming Scarfe on Scarfe on Scarfe at Ealing Studios 1986, in his studio and from his days as a 16 year old in Hampstead to Cheyne Walk. Gerald Scarfe received a CBE in 2008 and is still drawing blood in every way through his art. Showcasing his glittering career in design, reportage and show business. 276pp, many photos, some colour.