GEOFF BOTTOMS appreciates the local touch brought to a production of Dickens’s perennial classic
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Hassall, Lautrec and the true roots of toons
Star cartoonist MALC McGOOKIN introduces two commercial artists beloved by cartoonists and comic artists the world over
(L to R) Utagawa Kunisada, The Female Bandit Kijin no Omatsu, 1851; John Hassall, Skegness is So Bracing poster for GNR (Great Northern Railway), 1908; Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, Jane Avril, 1893
[piccredit: (L to R) National Diet Library/Public domain - Science Museum Group Collection/Public domain - Public domain]
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by a production whose design and cartoonish acting overwhelms the close scrutiny of characters
SUSAN DARLINGTON enjoys the raucous familiarity of a traditional topsy-turvy pantomime
RON JACOBS introduces the latest novel by the best writer of US working-class fiction writing today
HENRY BELL is fascinated by the underlying curiosities and contradictions of one of the great poets of the Mediterranean
DAVID RENTON recommends a books that explores the ways in which disabled people are made to feel both of and not part of this world
I WAS prompted to write this article after I’d offered up a cartoon satirizing both Nigel Farage and Clacton, a seaside town which has offered welcoming berths for Tories, knights and baronet MPs since 1604, including the wonderfully named Sir Nathaniel Rich and Sir Harbottle Grimston.
Farage is merely the latest carpetbagging Europhobe to shoehorn himself into the seat, although there was, admittedly, a WTF moment in 1997 when Labour’s Ivan Henderson got over the line.
The cartoon in question satirised the great John Hassall’s famous “Skegness Is SO Bracing” poster.
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