THE FIVE-YEAR RIDDELL

 

An astonishing, unprecedented, bravura achievement by the brilliant Chris Riddell.

On 15 December 2019 – realising he was living in, as they say, 'interesting times' – Chris decided he would start chronicling those times with daily political cartoon sketches, week-in-month-out for the next five years. 

 

With the publication this month of FIVE YEARS, Volume 5:  A Sketchbook of Political Drawings, he completes that amazing self-commissioned assignment.

 

The result is further proof (were it needed) of Chris' mastery of penmanship with which to provide a trenchant commentary on the follies, foibles and failings of those aspiring to be the movers and shakers of the national and international political scene. 

 

It's all here: the UK leaving the EU; the Covid pandemic; Boris, Corbyn, Party-gate and Cummings; Global Warming, refugees crossing the Channel in small boats and the invasion of Ukraine; Sleepy Joe, Harry and Megan, Prince Andrew and Pizza Express;, the passing of HM Queen Elizabeth II, Truss outlived by a lettuce and the long-awaited accession of King Charles III; Trump, Sunak and Starmer –– all human life and death, triumphs and disasters as witnessed across five years and 38,369 cartoons.

 

Chris Riddell's FIVE YEARS is a historic document of social importance and enduring record.

 

PEANUTTINESS

I have been in love with 'Peanuts' for so many years – at least 60, possibly more – that I'm rarely stopped in my tracks by the strip's recurrent moments of the bizarre, such as Snoopy pounding his typewriter or zooming into aerial combat on his Sopwith Camel doghouse, and then I run up against one of those zany sequences in which Charlie Brown's little sister, Sally, has a conversation with her school building and I realise that Charles Schulz's should be properly remembered not as a brilliant cartoonist but as one of the truly great surrealists of the twentieth century...

MOODY BLUES

 

A seemingly simple but stunning artwork by Lee Everett Blair (1911-1993). A piece of concept art created for the live-action silhouetted orchestra shots leading iinto the opening, abstract sequence of Fantasia (1940) featuring Bach's 'Toccata and Fugue in D minor' as orchestrated and conducted by Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Blair was an American artist, born in Los Angeles and died in Soquel, California, and was the younger brother of Preston Blair and husband of Mary Blair.

THE ANTIBIOTICS FIGHT BACK...

Latest Sibley Health Update... 

 

I spent the entire weekend in discomfort, thinking I had shingles, only to find (on finally managing to see a doctor last evening) that I have an allergic reaction to the blitz of back-to-back antibiotics with which I've been bombarded over the last three months – and beyond. As a result, I'm now covered in a very painful rash that – pardon the pun – is itching to be scratched 24/7. Pre-assessment for operation (and the op itself) are, once again, up for rescheduling.

 

Oh, yes, and I've got thrush in the mouth, making it difficult to eat, swallow and speak.

 

As Edward Lear might have limericked...

 

 

There was an Old Man from the South

Who found he had thrush in the mouth;

He said, "It's absurd,

To be stuck with a bird,

But it often occurs in the South."

 

 

 

[Illustration: 'Mr Lear', obvs!]

LOVER'S TRYST

Valentine's Day lovers blissfully focused on each other and are, in that moment – as is only right – unconcerned by the woes beneath which our world groans on this day devoted to affairs of the heart!

 

And when they leave, only the heart-balloon knows the secrets of their enraptured conversation...

 

 

[Photos: David Weeks]

AUTHOR AT WORK!

From my Peanuts Calendar for today: a classic example of Schultz's Snoopy-as Author-working-on-his-latest-opus cartoon!

 

 

 

 

Does anyone (after all these years) ever look at these dog-and-typewriter gags and think:

 

"Eh? ... Er...? WHAT?"

 

CURIOUSER AND CURIOUSER!

Totally astonishing, out-size, exterior house-decoration –– unless, of course, it's the White Rabbit's Incredible Shrinking House –– situated in that American wonderland that is New Orleans, Louisiana...