A Resumption Of My Giles Cartoon Collecting Returns Me My Youth And How I Learned United Kingdom History Since WW2
Jul 02, 2010
I have taken up again my mission to collect all the Giles’ cartoon annuals. This is something I began years ago and which stopped when we relocated to Australia and since we came home in 2003, I didn’t continue. I had only really started and so far have 12 of 50 books, the oldest of which goes back to 1953/54 and was the tenth series. The first series came out in 1946/47 and will no doubt be very expensive if I can locate one.
I got my love of Giles from my father who had lots of annuals at home throughout my boyhood and I used to adore reading them, usually once a year. The humour and detail of the drawing cast a crucial light on my comprehension of Twentieth Century British history after the war years. The Giles family continued through every twist and turn of the alterations to society, a solid point around which the world revolved.
Giles did his Work From Home, he would scan the papers and pick his topic for the day and begin to draw. When he was finished he would go to the station where he lived in Ipswich and put the cartoon on the train where someone from the Daily Express would retrieve it and take it to the printing works to be published in the next day’s paper.
Today, Giles life would probably be very different. For a start he could use Internet Business to deliver his work via a scanner and email. It would almost be seen to be doing a kind of Online Jobs but there would be more. As a modern day cartoonist he would have a website to give admirers more information, show random cartoons that perhaps hadn’t been published, sell Giles products and in all probability make him a very rich man.
That is not to say that he didn’t become well off. The Express paid him very highly to deliver 3 cartoons per week to them, £400,000 a year in 1955 – equivalent to today’s Premier League wages for the time. Many people only bought the Express on the days that Giles cartoons were included. But what made Giles special?
For a start he drew the 20th Century. The Giles family, though by no means in every cartoon, chronicled how the United Kingdom was changing. The teenage daughters frequently brought home a succession of hopeless boyfriends who ranged from teddy boys, mods and rockers, groovers and hippies, punks and new romantics to Goths. The hypochondriac Aunt Vera was constantly being scared by the latest health scare, always drawn putting a hankie to her nose, surrounded by collections of tablets and remedies. Her baby son, when not guarded close by was cruelly tortured by the other boys, usually with Ernie and Larry, the mop haired boy from next door, shown for example attempting to ignite the fire under a roasting spit that Vera’s baby way tied to. There was Mr Giles, a small working class man with ambitious schemes and a sailing obsession, married to Mother who actually keeps everything together against the chaos and anarchy, occasionally the one delivering the witty quip. And of course the fearsome Grandma, with a racing obsession, always dressed in a black coat with fox fur stole, with a penguin headed umbrella close to hand to keep off the rain or thrash someone who has provoked her displeasure.
It was the understated humour, gentle sarcasm of the world as it appeared to Giles that delivered the searing joke and when that was done, the rest of the action was in the background.
He carried out all his Work From Home and one wonders if he had been in an office what else would he have included? What would he have made of the Internet Business? He covered in 1960 the start of parking meters, the MOT test and traffic wardens. How would be portray Mr Giles trying to do Online Jobs with Ernie and Larry presumably setting up a porn site or hacking into the CIA at the back of the room, Grandma betting the family home on online bookmakers sites and Mother, as always with a pile of ironing good naturedly observing.
Giles taught me UK history from his present time. His cartoons remain timeless simply because they show, in a style that rarely varied down the ages, how the people and society of the times could be mocked, and take the sting out of difficult days.
I shall end with a description of a cartoon from 8th September 1963. We are in London. It is raining buckets, in front of Admiralty Arch the Life Guards are riding out along the Mall towards Buckingham Palace. Except for one soldier. He is trotting along behind, struggling with his swords and uniform to keep up. The caption below reads “A young lady called on the Household Cavalry this week to ask if she could buy one of their horses.” Genius.