- He was a life president of the RNLI (Royal National Lifeboat Institution), an independent lifeboat organization. Each year the organization issues charity Christmas cards bearing his work.
- He was a supporter of the UK football club Ipswich Town F.C.
- While he had a brief career as an animator in the 1930s-40s, he is best known as a newspaper cartoonist.
- He preferred to donate his work (rather than sell them off) to friends and to charitable organizations.
- His newspaper cartoon strips, which ran for 46 years (1945-91), primarily featured a working-class family who usually commented on whatever event was occurring at the time and whose home/hobbies/clothing reflected the changing British fashions and standard of living.
- In the 1980s Giles' comic family appeared in animated TV advertisements for Lyons Quick Brew tea - their only appearance in TV/film media.
- There is a statue of Giles' comic character Grandma in Queen Street in Ipswich, England where she stands looking up at the newspaper office window where Giles used to work.
- 1959: Awarded OBE (Officer, Order of the British Empire).
- Cartoonist: Reynolds News 1937-1943; Cartoonist: Daily Express & Sunday Express 1943-1995.
- Christened Ronald Giles, as a child he was nicknamed "Karlo" due to a supposed resemblance to Boris Karloff, later shortened to Carl. He was registered with that name when he died.
- The last decade of Giles's life was plagued with failing health, including sight loss and encroaching deafness, and in 1990 he suffered the amputation of both legs due to poor circulation issues.
- He was the son of a tobacconist and a farmer's daughter.
- In his teenage years he suffered a motorcycle accident that left him blind in one eye and deaf in one ear.
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