Ethel & Ernest

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I think Raymond's relationship with his parents was perhaps not an easy one although he clearly loves them.

Book in VG condition with small neat gift inscriptions jacket with a bit of wear and two closed tears to rear.Although Ernest and his wife were the models for Jim and Hilda in "When the Wind Blows", they are spared the violence and devastation of a nuclear holocaust and allowed to see out their days in peace (despite an ill-placed Morrison shelter almost doing for them during World War 2). Ethel and Ernest' (1998) is an affecting, effectively told and brilliantly illustrated graphic novel, telling the story of Briggs' parents from the 1930's to the 1970's. As Raymond grows up, he gets admitted into Grammar school which is exciting for his parents because they didn't have a proper education and then get disappointed when he wants to attend art school. Ethel, at first a lady's maid, with middle-class aspirations and firm notions of respectable behaviour, becomes a housewife when she marries, and later becomes a clerk in an office during the Second World War.

My problem with this was how Ethel came across: she came from a working class family (she had about 8 other siblings) and yet she looked down on what she referred to as 'commoners'. I've always thought that the difference between British and American children's literature is that the British never sentimentalize childhood. As far as I'm concerned, this is a comic strip of a couple discussing their son, politics and what they're doing to their house. Briggs shows us scenes from his imagination of his parents’ lives: how they met, raised a family during a destructive world war, and lived through the cultural roller-coaster ride of the 20th century.B: quite a common book but usually turns up surface soiled due to it consisting of a mostly white and unvarnished dustjacket. Briggs' portrait of his parents is a strange book - without real plot or narrative, it jumps from one situation to another in a disjointed and unique style, capturing small vignettes of twentieth century life but never quite expanding on them. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. With the loss of Briggs last week, it seemed important to mark the occasion by re-reading some of his works. Este hombre es, para mi corazoncito, el equivalente del niño cabroncete que siempre venía a tirarme de las coletas en el colegio.