John Bull the past Navy blue, but more recently with the Union Jack colours). Britannia, or a lion, is sometimes used as an alternative in some editorial cartoons. As a literary figure, John Bull is well-intentioned, frustrated, full of common sense, and entirely of native country stock. Unlike Uncle Sam later, he is not a figure of authority but rather a yeoman who prefers his small beer and domestic peace, possessed of neither patriarchal power nor heroic defiance. John Arbuthnot provided him with a sister named Peg (Scotland), and a traditional adversary in Louis Baboon (the House of Bourbon in France). Peg
John Bull French. In 1966, "The Times", criticising the Unionist government of Northern Ireland, branded the region "John Bull's Political Slum." Increasingly through the early twentieth century, John Bull became seen as not particularly representative of "the common man," and during the First World War this function was largely taken over by the figure of Tommy Atkins. John Bull's surname is also reminiscent of the alleged fondness of the English for beef, reflected in the French nickname for English people, "les rosbifs," which translates as "the 'Roast Beefs.'" It is also reminiscent of the animal, and for that reason Bull is portrayed