LONDON.- Donald Trump’s geopolitical standpoint is the constant subject of headlines these days – a sort of comic horror show – but back in the 1980s it was President Ronald Reagan who was mercilessly parodied on shows like Spitting Image as the global bogeyman.

Clear evidence of this can be found in this serio-comic map satirizing Reagan’s view of the world, dating to 1987. Designed David Horsey, an artist working for the Seattle Post Intelligencer, it is one of the many and varied maps that will be on offer at Europe’s largest map fair, The London Map Fair, at the Royal Geographical Society in Kensington Gore on June 8 and 9.

Horsey’s vision depicts President Reagan as a sheriff, his figure filling an exaggerated California, hands twitching over his six-guns. The rest of the U.S. is divided between the Mid and South-West (Republicans and Other Real Americans), the North-East (Democrats and Welfare Bums) and Alaska (Santa Claus'), with a special mention for San Francisco (Homos).

Central and South America are Illegal Aliens, Contra Country and Drug Pushers, with a portrait of Daniel Ortega; Africa, with a portrait of Gaddafi, is labeled Terrorists, Cuban Mercenaries and White Folks in apartheid South Africa.

In Europe the UK is marked Thatcher Land, again with a portrait, containing Our Missiles; France is labeled Socialists and Pacifist Wimps; and Poland is Solidarity.

The USSR (The Evil Empire) is filled with Gorbachev as a gun-slinger, with Their Missiles and Ma’s Cow. Israel is over-sized and contains Beirut; Arabia is Our Oil; Iran is Muslim Maniacs with Our Arms Shipments; China Good Commies; and Japan Inc is shaped like a car.

In the Indian Ocean is a compass rose, with a central image of Granny and her apple pie, and cardinal points of North (Rich), West (Us), South (Poor) and East (Them).

“The design and humour of maps like this make them extremely attractive and interesting to collectors,” says Massimo De Martini, of The Altea Gallery, who will be asking for £1600 for the map at the fair. “But there is a serious historical side to them as well. Thirty years on, it is fascinating to see how the world and attitudes have (and have not) changed. It would be equally fascinating to see how Horsey would redraw the map as a satire of Donald Trump’s view of the world today.”

Cold War politics is also the theme of the Red Atlas, which came out last year. Its co-author, academic, editor and author Alexander J. Kent, will give the London Map Fair Lecture at 2.30pm on Saturday, June 8, taking as his subject Cold War Cartography: Unravelling the Secret Soviet Military Mapping Programme.

The Red Atlas' is a ground-breaking book on the subject. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the USSR, western governments were shocked by how accurate and comprehensive Soviet global mapping was. It’s been suggested that the maps had more information than would have been necessary for a military invasion, but they would have been invaluable for administration after the revolution! They were copying official maps (eg the Ordnance Survey), but augmenting them with information from any available source – aerial photography, guide books and direct observation (diplomats, spies etc). And the whole thing was kept under wraps. Back in the USSR individual sheets had to be signed out and returned, even if damaged, so the full scale of the project was little known even there.

With prices from £10 to £100,000, The London Map Fair hosts more than 40 exhibitors from the USA and Europe who will offer a wide range of cartographic ephemera, from the rarest of early antique maps charting the New World, via pictorial maps of cities to works like this one.

Collectors have even more reason to be in London that weekend as, for the first time in years, the London Map Fair and the Provincial Booksellers Fairs Association’s (PBFA) London Antiquarian Book Fair (June 6-7, ILEC Conference Centre, Earls Court Hotel, SW6) AND the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association’s Firsts – London’s Rare Book Fair (June 7-9, Battersea Evolution) will all be on.