Donald McGill Saucy Christmas Cards Go On Sale

Donald McGill's Saucy Christmas Cards Go On Sale

He's best known for the saucy seaside postcards that hark back to a more innocent age in Britain, when his cartoons of buxom wives and inadequate husbands swapping innuendos were seen in shop fronts in coastal towns up and down the country.

But Donald McGill also turned his talents to producing a selection of Christmas cards, seen now for the first time in 70 years.

Perhaps fittingly, the collection is being sold from a tiny museum in Ryde on the Isle of Wight.

Owner James Bissell-Thomas's catalogue of more than 120,000 postcards is believed to be worth in the region of £240,000.

For all their nostalgic qualities modern Britons will recognise many of the themes in McGill's vision of Christmas, as his characters use the holidays as an excuse to over indulge on alcohol and attempt to woo one another.

McGill's bawdy seaside postcards - which he ranked according to their vulgarity as mild, medium and strong - sold in their millions before World War II (with the 'strong' images selling by far the best). Several works were banned for indecency in 1954. McGill died in 1962, aged 87.

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