Gilbert of Gilbert and Sullivan

The author of The Pirates of Penzance , The Mikado , HMS Pinafore and the other great Savoy libretti, W.S. Gilbert, witty, caustic and disrespectful, was one of the celebrities of the late Victorian age. In his time he had been many things: journalist, theatre critic, cartoonist, comic poet, stage director, writer of short stories and dramatist; a political satire he wrote was banned by the Lord Chamberlain at the personal insistence of the Prince of Wales. He wrote the most brilliantly inventiv