SEX, SILLINESS & GOOD OLD BRITISH PLUCK
Well, here is a treat – two of my favourite things combined in one: cartoons and war. Not the ‘Donner und Blitzen, Achtung Tommy’ I preferred when I was 10, but an equally enjoyable, though rather more subtle, pen-andink portrait of the Home Front, which is deep and slightly mystifying and feels more accurate than any other document of the Second World War I have encountered.
The Punch Historical Archive, covering the years 1841–1992, is available digitally from Gale and introduces us to the real perception of the conflict. Not everybody was rushing up the beach with Tom Hanks. The majority remained at home, clouded in bureaucratic mystery, sharing modest capabilities and not much self-knowledge. Even the soldiers who were supposed to fight seem unreassuringly pathetic in these pages. As most of us would have been, these are the spectators to somebody else’s war.
Here is a portrait of an average citizen in a nervous time. The newspaper and the radio kept people in touch and the government tried to organise them into the new community they needed to be simply to survive. Bewildered, middle-class bankers, determined old ladies and gormless junior soldiers looked on and puzzled. Here are their confusions. Here are their discomforts.
The large-scale ‘political’ cartoons collected in this archive chart the great events in terms of John Bull and scarily accurate portraits of Adolf (which would surely have condemned the perpetrators to the gas chambers in the event of invasion): Hitler in his leaking house, Göring blown up as a balloon over Poland. But each of these simple pictures must have carried an emotional kick. They map the major political concerns of the war – which seemed to be instances of government inefficiency as often as developments in the conflict itself. Today we may shudder at the national debt, or MPs’ expenses, but these were grim, pointed observations. Drawings of waves of swastikas crashing on the indomitable rock of Britain, or Hitler failing to take account of the British Navy, were cries of hope in a frightening era.
The ‘funnies’, however, introduce us to another, lost world: the world of the class-ridden British. The British who know their place. The British who also serve by only standing and waiting – usually in a queue, perhaps for a train, or outside a shop, but always ready with a cautious, nervous or daft remark. The most telling of these cartoons is by Fougasse. It shows a street before and after the declaration of war. You have to look closely, and then you get it. The people are talking to each other – as simple as that. The war has killed their natural reserve. This is the careless talk that saved lives and changed the country forever.
And what do we learn? Who are these British? How do they see themselves? Well, they are genuinely of a type. These are not fanatical people. Or smart. They are not bellicose. They are not cool. Punch portrays an ordinary, middling people, as most of us are: little, fat, plain, silly, eager, emotional, confused and prone to stupidity. There is probably courage here, but it is hung about with snobbery, sex, officiousness and silliness, as it would always be. Far more like Dad’s Army than The Great Escape.
The smaller cartoons mop up the unexpected in life. The charm of the little girl standing with arms folded: ‘But you weren’t always being worried to death by war talk when you were my size.’ The ordinary expectations of the average conscript. How valuable to the British spirit facetiousness really is. The ability to laugh at ourselves and offi cialdom even in the context of dire threat to life was vital to survival. Even in the midst of cataclysm there needed to be a sense of proportion and a fervent faith in the ridiculous.
I once had to interview George MacDonald Fraser, himself a redoubtable veteran of the Second World War. I wanted to know how he did his incredibly accurate research for the Flashman books. ‘Old copies of Punch,’ he said. I knew precisely the ones he meant. I spent wet lunchtimes in my school’s Bean Library flicking through the bound volumes of the magazine. That was the place to see Gladstone waving some obscure bill or ponder six-line jokes about the behaviour of rural deans.
By the 1940s Punch had been through some sort of revolution. The captions had lost weight; the drawings less heavy-handed and ponderous. The observation was funnier. This collection is sharp and inventive. It makes me laugh. But above all, it is revelatory.
Reading this it looks like the Germans could have overrun Britain as long as they chose an early-closing day. There is no fanaticism in these pages; just lots of dignity, plenty of worry and a hell of a lot of bumbling through. Compare this with the posturing in our recent wars. The lack of a sustained opposition in Parliament. The humourlessness of the BBC Trust. Punch may off er harmless, toothless jokes, but they are still jokes in terrible, frightening times.
It was quite simple. The opponent was a fool. Defeat was inconceivable. John Bull would stand up to him and knock him down. The Punch reader, who was expected to recognise himself as the stout, mustachioed father figure in the tin hat, an unassuming, resolutely ordinary person, was simply not going to stand for it.
Punch is no more, but the archive is available from Gale, part of Cengage Learning. Newspaper editors are cutting costs by dropping British cartoonists from daily pages. Who will record us for the future? Oh, yes, there are plenty of columnists blathering on. But for all the waffle, will they ever be as vivid as these sharp, accurate miniature scoops of life?
The Punch Historical Archive, 1841-1992, from Gale, part of Cengage Learning, is available as a subscription or one-off purchase to academic, public and government libraries and forms part of the Gale NewsVault programme: www.gale.cengage.co.uk/punch-historical-archive.aspx
All cartoons credited to ©Punch Ltd?
The Punch Historical Archive, covering the years 1841–1992, is available digitally from Gale and introduces us to the real perception of the conflict. Not everybody was rushing up the beach with Tom Hanks. The majority remained at home, clouded in bureaucratic mystery, sharing modest capabilities and not much self-knowledge. Even the soldiers who were supposed to fight seem unreassuringly pathetic in these pages. As most of us would have been, these are the spectators to somebody else’s war.
Here is a portrait of an average citizen in a nervous time. The newspaper and the radio kept people in touch and the government tried to organise them into the new community they needed to be simply to survive. Bewildered, middle-class bankers, determined old ladies and gormless junior soldiers looked on and puzzled. Here are their confusions. Here are their discomforts.
The large-scale ‘political’ cartoons collected in this archive chart the great events in terms of John Bull and scarily accurate portraits of Adolf (which would surely have condemned the perpetrators to the gas chambers in the event of invasion): Hitler in his leaking house, Göring blown up as a balloon over Poland. But each of these simple pictures must have carried an emotional kick. They map the major political concerns of the war – which seemed to be instances of government inefficiency as often as developments in the conflict itself. Today we may shudder at the national debt, or MPs’ expenses, but these were grim, pointed observations. Drawings of waves of swastikas crashing on the indomitable rock of Britain, or Hitler failing to take account of the British Navy, were cries of hope in a frightening era.
The ‘funnies’, however, introduce us to another, lost world: the world of the class-ridden British. The British who know their place. The British who also serve by only standing and waiting – usually in a queue, perhaps for a train, or outside a shop, but always ready with a cautious, nervous or daft remark. The most telling of these cartoons is by Fougasse. It shows a street before and after the declaration of war. You have to look closely, and then you get it. The people are talking to each other – as simple as that. The war has killed their natural reserve. This is the careless talk that saved lives and changed the country forever.
And what do we learn? Who are these British? How do they see themselves? Well, they are genuinely of a type. These are not fanatical people. Or smart. They are not bellicose. They are not cool. Punch portrays an ordinary, middling people, as most of us are: little, fat, plain, silly, eager, emotional, confused and prone to stupidity. There is probably courage here, but it is hung about with snobbery, sex, officiousness and silliness, as it would always be. Far more like Dad’s Army than The Great Escape.
The smaller cartoons mop up the unexpected in life. The charm of the little girl standing with arms folded: ‘But you weren’t always being worried to death by war talk when you were my size.’ The ordinary expectations of the average conscript. How valuable to the British spirit facetiousness really is. The ability to laugh at ourselves and offi cialdom even in the context of dire threat to life was vital to survival. Even in the midst of cataclysm there needed to be a sense of proportion and a fervent faith in the ridiculous.
I once had to interview George MacDonald Fraser, himself a redoubtable veteran of the Second World War. I wanted to know how he did his incredibly accurate research for the Flashman books. ‘Old copies of Punch,’ he said. I knew precisely the ones he meant. I spent wet lunchtimes in my school’s Bean Library flicking through the bound volumes of the magazine. That was the place to see Gladstone waving some obscure bill or ponder six-line jokes about the behaviour of rural deans.
By the 1940s Punch had been through some sort of revolution. The captions had lost weight; the drawings less heavy-handed and ponderous. The observation was funnier. This collection is sharp and inventive. It makes me laugh. But above all, it is revelatory.
Reading this it looks like the Germans could have overrun Britain as long as they chose an early-closing day. There is no fanaticism in these pages; just lots of dignity, plenty of worry and a hell of a lot of bumbling through. Compare this with the posturing in our recent wars. The lack of a sustained opposition in Parliament. The humourlessness of the BBC Trust. Punch may off er harmless, toothless jokes, but they are still jokes in terrible, frightening times.
It was quite simple. The opponent was a fool. Defeat was inconceivable. John Bull would stand up to him and knock him down. The Punch reader, who was expected to recognise himself as the stout, mustachioed father figure in the tin hat, an unassuming, resolutely ordinary person, was simply not going to stand for it.
Punch is no more, but the archive is available from Gale, part of Cengage Learning. Newspaper editors are cutting costs by dropping British cartoonists from daily pages. Who will record us for the future? Oh, yes, there are plenty of columnists blathering on. But for all the waffle, will they ever be as vivid as these sharp, accurate miniature scoops of life?
The Punch Historical Archive, 1841-1992, from Gale, part of Cengage Learning, is available as a subscription or one-off purchase to academic, public and government libraries and forms part of the Gale NewsVault programme: www.gale.cengage.co.uk/punch-historical-archive.aspx
All cartoons credited to ©Punch Ltd?