Penelope Rides Again


By Thelwell (Mandarin)
ISBN: 978-0-74930-735-6

Norman Thelwell is one of Britain’s most beloved cartoonists and his appeal hasn’t dwindled since his untimely death in 2004. If you want to know more about this brilliant creator – and see more of his work before you inevitably succumb and start hunting down the 42 assorted books themselves – you should simply crank up your preferred search-engine and go hunting. I especially recommend his official website www.thelwell.org.uk/biography/biography.html or the always entrancing and revelatory Bear Alley from British comics art scholar Steve Hollands.

Thelwell’s superbly gentle cartooning combined Bigfoot abstractions with a keen and accurate eye for background detail, not just on the riding and countryside themes that made him a household name, but on all the myriad subjects he turned his canny eye to. His pictures are an immaculate condensation of everything warm yet charged and resonant about being Post-War, Baby-Booming British, without ever being parochial or provincial. His work has international implications and scope, neatly achieving that by presenting us to the world. There are dozens of books to enjoy, both humorous and instructional, and any aficionado of humour and masterful draftsmanship could do much worse than own them all.

From 1950 when his gag-panel Chicko first began in the Eagle, and especially two years later with his first sale to Punch, he built a solid body of irresistible, seductive and always funny work. He appeared in innumerable magazines, comics and papers ranging from Men Only to Everybody’s Weekly. In 1957 Angels on Horseback, his first collection of published cartoons was released, and in 1961 he made the rare reverse trip by releasing a book of all-new cartoons that was subsequently serialised in the Sunday Express.

A Leg at Each Corner was a huge success and other books followed. Eventually this led to the strip collected in the book reviewed here, a hilarious weekly account of the dubious joys of riding and the ineffable love between little monsters and the demented children who try to ride them.

Apparently Thelwell’s short, obnoxious muses originated in the field next door to his home, where roamed two shaggy ponies. As he recalled years later…

“Small and round and fat and of very uncertain temper” – apparently owned by “Two little girls about three feet high who could have done with losing a few ounces themselves….”

“As the children got near, the ponies would swing round and present their ample hindquarters and give a few lightning kicks which the children would side-step calmly as if they were avoiding the kitchen table, and they had the head-collars on those animals before they knew what was happening. I was astonished at how meekly they were led away; but they were planning vengeance – you could tell by their eyes.”

Those determined little lasses were a lasting inspiration and led to a long-running newspaper strip featuring the equine trials and tribulations of an irrepressible young lady and her hairy true love which ran under the title Penelope in the Sunday Express sporadically from 1962 to 1971.

Also regularly appearing were a coterie of equally stalwart, philosophical stable-mates including the unflappable Fiona on her Old English Sheep-horse and Billy Bog-Spavin and Magnus – a couple of boys whom you’d think would know better – daily risking life and limb on the surly backs of squat, demonic steeds.

Of course the real star is the shambling, greedy, lazy and downright hostile Kipper – clearly a thinly disguised Przewalski’s Horse (world’s most savagely truculent herbivore – look it up and see!) who spent most of the strip’s run in  the Sunday Express from 1962 to 1971 eating, throwing, kicking and generally frustrating that sweetly determined little girl.

This second collection is far harder to find than the first, which leads me to ask why some savvy publisher hasn’t already gathered both these delightful books into one irresistible complete edition? Timeless laughs, brilliant art and cute fluffy critters (except the ponies): who could resist?
© 1989 Norman Thelwell and Express Newspapers Plc.