Political playing cards (2015)
Political playing cards produced by Oliver Preston at the time of the 2015 UK Parliamentary election.
This pack of political cartoons was produced by Oliver Preston at the time of the 2015 UK Parliamentary election. Preston is a British cartoonist whose early cartoons were published in Punch Magazine, Paris Match, The Beano, The Dandy and The Spectator. From 1995 to 2020, he was the regular cartoonist for The Field Magazine. From autumn 2019-2021 Preston drew weekly cartoons for Country Life Magazine. See the box►
The cards feature the following politicians: Spades – Conservatives: David Cameron, George Osborne, Theresa May, Boris Johnson; hearts – Labour: Ed Miliband, Ed Balls, Yvette Cooper, Douglas Alexander; diamonds – Liberal Democrats: Nick Clegg, Vince Cable, Jo Swinson, Danny Alexander; clubs – Media: Andrew Marr, Adam Boulton, Emily Maitlis, Nick Robinson. The jokers are Nigel Farage (UKIP), Nathalie Bennett (Green Party), and Alex Salmond (SNP).
Above: political playing cards produced by Oliver Preston at the time of the 2015 UK Parliamentary election.
• For more information about Oliver Preston see here►
By Peter Burnett
United Kingdom • Member since July 27, 2022
I graduated in Russian and East European Studies from Birmingham University in 1969. It was as an undergraduate in Moscow in 1968 that I stumbled upon my first 3 packs of “unusual” playing cards which fired my curiosity and thence my life-long interest. I began researching and collecting cards in the early 1970s, since when I’ve acquired over 3,330 packs of non-standard cards, mainly from North America, UK and Western Europe, and of course from Russia and the former communist countries.
Following my retirement from the Bodleian Library in Dec. 2007 I took up a new role as Head of Library Development at the International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP) to support library development in low-income countries. This work necessitated regular training visits to many sub-Saharan African countries and also further afield, to Vietnam, Nepal and Bangladesh – all of which provided rich opportunities to further expand my playing card collection.
Since 2019 I’ve been working part-time in the Bodleian Library where I’ve been cataloguing the bequest of the late Donald Welsh, founder of the English Playing Card Society.
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