{"id":5317,"date":"2010-08-12T08:00:52","date_gmt":"2010-08-12T08:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/?p=5317"},"modified":"2010-08-12T09:55:28","modified_gmt":"2010-08-12T09:55:28","slug":"thelwell%e2%80%99s-book-of-leisure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/2010\/08\/12\/thelwell%e2%80%99s-book-of-leisure\/","title":{"rendered":"Thelwell’s Book of Leisure"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"
\nBy Norman<\/strong> Thelwell<\/strong> (Magnum\/Eyre Methuen)
\nISBN: 0-417-01000-1<\/p>\n

Norman Thelwell (3rd<\/sup> May 1923 \u00e2\u20ac\u201c 7th<\/sup> February 2004) is one of our most beloved cartoonists. His 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 compositions are an immaculate condensation of everything deprecatingly; resolutely Post-War, Baby-Booming British – without ever becoming parochial or provincial.<\/p>\n

His work has international implications and scope, neatly achieving that by presenting us to the world for decades. There are 32 books of his work and every aficionado of humour – illustrated or otherwise – could do much worse than possess them all.<\/p>\n

From 1950 when his gag-panel Chicko<\/em> began in the<\/strong> Eagle<\/strong>, and especially two years later with his first sale to Punch<\/strong>, he built a solid body of irresistible, seductive and always funny work. He appeared in innumerable magazines, comics and papers ranging from Men Only<\/strong> to Everybody’s Weekly<\/strong>. In 1957 his first collection of published cartoons Angels on Horseback<\/em><\/strong> 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<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

His dry, sly, cannily observed drawings were <\/strong>a huge success and other books followed to supplement his regular appearances in a variety of newspapers and magazines. Thus we have here his shrewd pictorial observations of the growth of a Leisure Economy and the strange phenomenon of people of all classes with a little time on their hands\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

These strips, culled mostly from the venerable and equally-missed Punch,<\/strong> (the others all originally appearing in the Sunday Express<\/strong>) come from a time when hobbies and holidays were just starting to become the inviolable, inalienable right of all Britons: no matter how annoying, painful and just plain frustrating they might be\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

These cartoons range from the wonderfully silly to the near-mordant, created by a man who came to epitomise middle-class values, aspirations and self-delusions, but Thelwell was also an observer who could spot cupidity, cant and social imbecility a mile off and knew human nature never really evolved, so don’t expect to see a point of view… just the extremes of daftness and pigheadedness we can resort to whilst trying to relax and have a good time\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

Subdivided into Leisure on Wheels<\/em>, Messing About\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6, Strictly For the Birds\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/em>, Relaxing at Home<\/em>, Drinks by the Pool<\/em>, Away From it All<\/em>, The Inner Man<\/em> (an especially telling sally against food-ism and consumption), Leisurely Pastimes<\/em> and a particularly exhilarating general section of gags, all still trenchantly relevant and bitingly funny today: another startling exhibition of the artist’s fantastic, funny foresight and the British unwillingness to embrace change.<\/p>\n

We may do stranger things today than even Thelwell could have dreamed of, but the art of down-time still obsesses us all and these superb cartoons are simply the most effective cure to the stress of relaxation that I can imagine. Timeless and delightful, why not chill out to these gems and give the Leisure rat-race a miss this year\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6?
\n\u00c2\u00a9 1968, 1978 Norman Thelwell.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Norman Thelwell (Magnum\/Eyre Methuen) ISBN: 0-417-01000-1 Norman Thelwell (3rd May 1923 \u00e2\u20ac\u201c 7th February 2004) is one of our most beloved cartoonists. His 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 … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Thelwell’s Book of Leisure”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[42,88],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best-of-british","category-british-cartooning"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4AFj-1nL","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5317"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5317\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}