Penelope

By Thelwell (Eyre Methuen)
ISBN: 978-0-41329-340-4

Norman Thelwell is one of our most beloved cartoonists – even though he sadly passed away in 2004. I was going to astound you with my knowledge here but frankly his work has always been its own best advocate, and if you want to know more about this brilliant creator – and see more of his work – you should crank up your search-engine of choice. I specifically recommend the official website (www.thelwell.org.uk/biography/biography.html) as well as Steve Holland’s excellent Bear Alley .

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 and subtle brushstrokes 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 32 books of his work and any aficionado of humour 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. Thelwell’s short obnoxious muses originated in the field next door to his home, where roamed two shaggy ponies…

“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.”

Penelope and her formidable steed Kipper ran – or at least reluctantly trotted – (sorry, I have no will-power or shame) through the pages of the Sunday Express where Thelwell toiled from 1962 to 1971. This wonderful book is readily available, as is the sequel Penelope Rides Again, and I trust that anyone with an ounce of decency and taste will treat themselves to the work of this master as soon as humanly possible.

© 1972 Norman Thelwell and Beaverbrook Newspapers Ltd.