The Roast Beef of Old England After Calais Gate by William Hogarth Steve Bell 1996

O the Roast Beef of Old England ('The Gate of Calais'), 1748 William Hogarth © Tate London, 2003

Drawn on March 20th 1996 during the beef scare which took hold when Tory Health minister Stephen Dorrell calmly announced that eating mad cow beef was the likeliest cause of new variant CJD, a terrible wasting brain disease. The rest of the world promptly slapped a ban on British beef. The Tories responded by blaming the Europeans. Somehow an ironic treatment of Hogarth's famous Gates of Calais image seemed appropriate, so I copied the original onto some CS10 coated paper, then proceeded to remove all the people, except the central figure which I amended to John Major in a strait jacket.

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