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Cyril Bird, the son of the England cricketer, Arthur Bird, was born in London in 1887. After attending Cheltenham College, Bird he studied engineering at King's College and took art classes at Regent Street Polytechnic.

An officer in the Royal Engineers during the First World War, he was blown up by a shell at Gallipoli in 1915. His injuries were so bad he was not expected to survive. Invalided out of the British Army, Bird's cartoons first appeared in Punch Magazine in 1916. He used the name Fougasse (a type of French mine) to avoid confusion with another Punch contributor W. Bird (Jack B. Yeats). Bird also contributed to The Bystander, The Graphic, London Opinion, The Stetch and The Tatler.

Bird's style was notable for what one critic called its "pronounced linear simplicity." Like H. L. Bateman, another cartoonist who worked for Punch Magazine during the war, Bird often adopted an episodic format.

Bird became Art Editor of Punch Magazine in 1937 and during the Second World War designed several posters for various government departments including his famous Careless Talk Costs Lives series for the Ministry of Information.

In 1949 Bird was appointed editor of Punch Magazine, a post he held until his retirement in 1953. Cyril Bird died in 1965.

 

Cyril Bird, Careless Talk Costs Lives (1940)

 

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