'The Retreat from Reason', 2012

Pen and ink with watercolour by Dave Brown.

This cartoon was published in 'The Independent' on 10 March 2012. It satirises British foreign and defence policy in Afghanistan by re-imagining Lady Butler's famous 1879 painting, 'Remnants of an Army'. This showed Dr William Brydon, supposedly the last survivor of the disastrous 1842 Retreat from Kabul, staggering back to Jellalabad in British territory on a dying horse.

In Brown's cartoon, Prime Minister David Cameron MP replaces Dr Brydon. He is is shown in 19th century British Army uniform flogging a skeleton and urging it, 'On... On to a secure democratic Afghanistan!', to which his horse replies, 'You takin' the pith?'