Donald Rooum

Donald Rooum (born 20 April 1928) is an English anarchist cartoonist and writer. He has a long association with Freedom Press who have published seven volumes of his Wildcat cartoons.

In 1963 he played a key role in exposing Harold Challenor, a corrupt police officer who tried to frame him.

Donald Rooum was born in Bradford. He registered as a conscientious objector but was pressured by his family into doing two years military service, starting January 1947. A resettlement grant following his discharge allowed him to study commercial design at Bradford Regional Art School from 1949 to 1953. Rooum's 1952 portrait by Frank Lisle, one of his lecturers of the time, is in Wakefield Gallery.

From 1954 to 1966 Rooum worked as a layout artist and typographer in London advertising agencies, then as a lecturer in typographic design at the London College of Printing until 1983. He studied life sciences at the Open University from 1973 to 1979, and was awarded a first class degree in 1980. He was elected Member of the Institute of Biology (incorporated into the Society of Biology in October 2009) and became a chartered biologist in 2004.

Rooum lived with Irene Brown from 1954 to 1983 and they had four children: Josephine Anne (born 1956), Penelope Jane (born 1958 died 1960), Mathew Donald (born 1960) and Rebecca Jane (born 1962).

Rooum says that he first became interested in anarchism in 1944 when he visited Speaker's Corner in London while on a Ministry of Food scheme which used schoolboys to pick hops in Kent. He subscribed to War Commentary, thus beginning a connection with Freedom Press which has continued for over sixty years. During that time he has been a writer for and an editor of Freedom, the name to which War Commentary reverted after the end of the Second World War.

...
Wikipedia