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The Best of Punch Cartoons: 2,000 Humor Classics
Book by Walasek, Helen
608 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2009
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
March 21, 2025
Some of my first memories of our tiny post-war bungalow nestled beyond the gentrified fringes of 1950’s Canadian civilisation are of laughing at my parents’ earlier version of this coffee table book!
Wry, weird smasher of shibboleths - Punch - exemplified peacetime dry Brit humour.
We now desperately Needed to laugh at something - anything - in the Cold War. Malcolm Muggeridge and his staff delivered. And over in America the New Yorker did the same.
Walter Cronkite’s Cold War realism on our B-and-W TV cried out for an antidote!
But there were many times in my five year old me’s life when - not grasping the more sophisticated Brit jokes in this collection - I could pick up Mom’s equally heavy compendium of wit in the New Yorker, and giggle at the Adam’s Family more Aspie-oriented Hallowe’en humour!
***
The Risky Business of our generation’s tastes and morals has led us fifties holdovers into the Risky Cold Embrace of the Machine. Loose morals are now au fait - for the Machine’s first gift to us in the seventies, as Lawrence Ferlingetti forecasted in the sixties, was the Coney Island of the Mind!
Want fries with that? Now the kids who don’t buy into that gambit are called weird!
But without our Coney Islands we feel like we’re in limbo. We’ve escaped into a bleak world, like in the Truman Show. So we keep moving. Till it’s at Warp Speed.
What’s the raison d’être? Simple, maybe.
(Like the Maximisation of Consumption?)
***
The fifties were a time of repressed libidos - at least publicly - so these Cartoons are kid-friendly. No parental guidance needed! But conditions in those days were tough as nails. It was a man’s world.
Now it’s a no man’s land.
And living alone with my parents in my first three years, Mom would sometimes unload her heart to me. Folks back then couldn’t hide behind their - now quite de rigeur - convenient masks. That’s the reason I take off mine here!
Being a child of the fifties meant you were free and could laugh out loud! Have you noticed our social disguises after COVID? Heartfelt remarks bring red faces now.
So we’ve become politically correct.
In the Machine’s cold embrace, reality is now Coney Island!
In the fifties, we thought it was the Bomb.
Who was nearer to the Truth?
Well, I have it on respected authority that studies show folks work faster, leaner and better in an Amusement Park.
Are you bemused now?
Well, read this book -
And LOL!😜
Wry, weird smasher of shibboleths - Punch - exemplified peacetime dry Brit humour.
We now desperately Needed to laugh at something - anything - in the Cold War. Malcolm Muggeridge and his staff delivered. And over in America the New Yorker did the same.
Walter Cronkite’s Cold War realism on our B-and-W TV cried out for an antidote!
But there were many times in my five year old me’s life when - not grasping the more sophisticated Brit jokes in this collection - I could pick up Mom’s equally heavy compendium of wit in the New Yorker, and giggle at the Adam’s Family more Aspie-oriented Hallowe’en humour!
***
The Risky Business of our generation’s tastes and morals has led us fifties holdovers into the Risky Cold Embrace of the Machine. Loose morals are now au fait - for the Machine’s first gift to us in the seventies, as Lawrence Ferlingetti forecasted in the sixties, was the Coney Island of the Mind!
Want fries with that? Now the kids who don’t buy into that gambit are called weird!
But without our Coney Islands we feel like we’re in limbo. We’ve escaped into a bleak world, like in the Truman Show. So we keep moving. Till it’s at Warp Speed.
What’s the raison d’être? Simple, maybe.
(Like the Maximisation of Consumption?)
***
The fifties were a time of repressed libidos - at least publicly - so these Cartoons are kid-friendly. No parental guidance needed! But conditions in those days were tough as nails. It was a man’s world.
Now it’s a no man’s land.
And living alone with my parents in my first three years, Mom would sometimes unload her heart to me. Folks back then couldn’t hide behind their - now quite de rigeur - convenient masks. That’s the reason I take off mine here!
Being a child of the fifties meant you were free and could laugh out loud! Have you noticed our social disguises after COVID? Heartfelt remarks bring red faces now.
So we’ve become politically correct.
In the Machine’s cold embrace, reality is now Coney Island!
In the fifties, we thought it was the Bomb.
Who was nearer to the Truth?
Well, I have it on respected authority that studies show folks work faster, leaner and better in an Amusement Park.
Are you bemused now?
Well, read this book -
And LOL!😜
October 3, 2015
I think the works up to the post-war were the best. I particularly adored Charles Keene’s and George de Maurier’s detailed drawings, the much latter Fougasse’s (Kenneth Bird) wit and William Augustus Sillence's unique style of using canvas-grained papers.
There were a number of cartoons which humour I did not get, not being British, but the rest could be understood by anyone who understands English. Very witty.
There were a number of cartoons which humour I did not get, not being British, but the rest could be understood by anyone who understands English. Very witty.
May 7, 2023
Private Eye always bated Punch but I read both of them until the early 1990s. The cartoons are just brilliant, and its funny how many topics from the early years still resonate: plumbers who disdain to get out of bed for less than a gold bar, dissolute politicians, randy husbands and rude mechanicals getting the better of their elders and betters. Splendid and timeless, with such a vast selection of magazines at WH Smith it has still never been replaced...
May 3, 2015
This has to be the best cartoon anthology currently available. The much-missed Punch magazine was often smug, and not always as funny as it thought it was, but it was supreme when it came to cartoons. This wonderful collection of 2,000 of the best covers the whole history of the magazine, from the wordy, intricately drawn cartoons of the mid-Victorian era, through such classics as the Curate's Egg through two world wars up to the 1990s. All the greats are represented: George du Maurier, Bateman, Shepard, the wonderful Fougasse (whose wonderful relaxed style foreshadows the late twentieth century drawings of Heath, Honeysett and Husband), Hoffnung, Searle and Thelwell, and many others. I've been working my way through this slowly to ensure the pleasure lasted as long as possible. Now that I have got to the end, I'm sure I'll be dipping back in again and again.
January 3, 2010
This was a Christmas present from my Punch-loving brother. It's a huge book, and a worthy successor to an old favorite, "A Century of Punch Cartoons" (published in the 1950s). The new book, although lacking color sections, includes the whole history of Punch, and adds sections on the decades since "A Century..." was printed.
September 2, 2013
A GREAT introspective on a British publication which really eaved high the banner of smart editorial cartooning. A thick, meaty volume with reproductions from the 1800s? Check. A sense of humor that runs the gamut? Check. Examples of work from tons of artists? THis is a great coffee table book, if only to pore over.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews