Walter Ernest Fawkes (né Pearsall; 21 June 1924 – 1 March 2023), also known as Trog when signing cartoons, was a Canadian-British jazz clarinettist and satirical cartoonist.

After emigrating with his family to Britain from Canada when he was 7 years old,[1] he taught himself the clarinet, and first joined a revivalist jazz band with George Webb in 1944.

When Flook ended he continued to illustrate until failing eyesight forced him to retire in 2005 at age 81,[1] leaving him to concentrate solely on his clarinet playing.

[5][4] His father, Douglas Pearsall, was a Canadian railway clerk whom his mother, Mabel (née Ainsley), later left for Charles Fawkes, a British printer.

[3] On the outbreak of the Second World War, Fawkes was first employed painting camouflage on factory roofs to hide them from enemy bombing.

[3] Fawkes later joined George Webb's Dixielanders, a semi-professional revivalist jazz band that featured Lyttelton on trumpet, in 1944.

[2] When Lyttelton left the Dixielanders in January 1948 to form his own jazz band, Fawkes went with him and stayed there until 1956,[5][8] by which time it had evolved past revivalism and became more mainstream.

[4] He based his style on that of American jazz composer Sidney Bechet[2] and once recorded with him and Louis Armstrong,[9] as part of Lyttelton's band, in 1949.

In 1942, he entered an art competition that was judged by the Daily Mail's chief cartoonist Leslie Illingworth, who found him work with the Clement Davies advertising agency.

Despite producing larger political cartoons for the Daily Mail, his future role as Illingworth's successor as lead cartoonist was threatened by the paper's preference for the work of Gerald Scarfe.

At The Observer he fell foul of the readership when readers complained that some of his cartoons about the British royalty were "grossly discourteous to the Queen".