But despite what he described as his strong traditionalist feelings he was a floating voter: "I've voted Tory and Labour in my time and I think once, in a moment of total mental aberration, voted Liberal." He distrusted the Conservatives for what he saw as their persistent bias in favour of property developers and against conservation. He rarely let his own views show obviously in his cartoons, but his hatred of political oppression was reflected in his portrayal of fascist, communist and apartheid regimes, and he refused to go to his beloved Greece while the military junta was in power from 1967 to 1974. In religion he described himself as "a C of E man... with that embarrassment induced in all right-thinking men by any mention of God outside church." Legacy, honours and reputation Exhibitions Apart from an exhibition as an undergraduate, Lancaster had four large-scale shows of his works. The first was in Norwich in 1955–56, when Betjeman opened an exhibition covering the range of Lancaster's output, including posters from the 1930s as well as cartoons, stage designs, watercolours and architectural drawings. In 1967 a London show concentrated on his costumes and scenery, with examples of work from plays, ballets, opera and, exceptionally, film (Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines, 1965). In 1973, at the instigation of Roy Strong, the National Portrait Gallery mounted "The Littlehampton Bequest", for which Lancaster painted portraits of Willy Littlehampton's supposed ancestors and offspring, in the style of artists down the centuries, from Holbein to Van Dyck and Lely, and then to Reynolds and Gainsborough and on to Sargent and Hockney. Strong wrote an introduction to the book Lancaster published of the collected portraits. To mark the centenary of Lancaster's birth, The Wallace Collection staged an exhibition titled Cartoons and Coronets: The Genius of Osbert Lancaster from October 2008 to January 2009. It was curated by James Knox, the editor and author of a lavishly-illustrated biography and catalogue with the same title as the exhibition. Honours Lancaster's honours included his knighthood, his CBE in the 1953 Coronation Honours and an honorary D.Litt from Oxford, as well as honorary degrees from Birmingham (1964), Newcastle upon Tyne (1970), and St Andrews (1974). Reputation In 2008, the year of Lancaster's centenary, Peter York called him "A national treasure... arguably Britain's most popular newspaper cartoonist, certainly our most effective, popular architectural historian and illustrator and one of