The bard of cartoons - Shakespeare dies after cancer battle
By Tony Bosworth in Media News on Tuesday, 10th June 2025 at 10:30am
Shakespeare's self-portrait cartoon in the Sydney Morning Herald.
John Shakespeare, whose illustrations graced the pages of Australia’s news publications for nearly four decades, passed away on Monday evening after a battle with cancer. He was 63.
Shakespeare is survived by his partner, Anna-Lisa Backlund, and their son, Lukas.
As Jordan Baker writes in The Sydney Morning Herald, while many readers knew him for the whimsy and sharpness of his illustrations, his colleagues knew him as “Shakes”, a quiet, warm presence in the newsroom who blended technical mastery with gentle wit.
For 39 years, he contributed artwork that captured both the absurd and the profound, often in the same stroke.
As Baker reported, “Even when he’s drawing all the worst pollies, there’s a ...
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