Ethel & Ernest

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The story takes place in London, England from the 1920s through 1971. We meet Ethel who is a maid who one day she sees a man from the window who is riding a bike. He waves at her and she blushes that a man is paying attention to her. He tells her that his name is Ernest and then asks her out to go watch a movie. After that encounter they become a couple and soon enough they get married. She quits her job and becomes a house wife while Ernest works as a milkman. We enter the 1930s and the times are rough during these period because of high unemployment, recuperating from WWI, and economic depression.

His long-time editor, Julia MacRae, felt overwhelmed with emotion when Briggs first showed her the work.She says: "I think he makes it real because it's set in domesticity. It's the tiny little details, even when awful things are happening to them. When Jim is bleeding Hilary says, 'Oh no, on your nice shirt'. The mundane details make it very real and very touching. He's wonderful at dialogue." His final book was consciously intended to be just that. Compiled across several of his last years, Time for Lights Out (2019) is a poignant, funny and deeply honest exploration of the experience of ageing and reaching the end of life, in the form of a collage of verse, drawings and random thoughts.

This was such a short and sweet book and I enjoyed every aspect of it from the storyline, the illustrations and how grateful we are as human beings when parents try and make the life of their children better than what they went through. Their son became a famous illustrator and author and never had to live below poverty level or be a working class. It was sad how they both died and I am glad that Raymond chose to honor them in his book.

In Ethel & Ernest vertelt Raymond Briggs het verhaal van het huwelijk van zijn ouders. Vanaf hun eerste toevallige ontmoeting in 1928, toen Ethel nog een dienstmeisje en Ernest melkboer was. Ze trouwden, kregen hun zoon Raymond in 1934, tot hun dood, binnen enkele maanden na elkaar, in 1971. Whilst the story was heart-warming and quite tender in places, I couldn't help but notice the political discrepancies between them. Ethel was a Tory and Ernest was Labour. 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 understand that she wanted what was best for her son but too many people in this world try and forget their roots, and they're ashamed of them, when they really shouldn't be. I am working-class and I always will be. I just feel that Ethel sometimes came across as someone who thought she was better than others which diminished the affinity I had with her. Park says: "They only had a clip ready and they showed it as a treat at the London Film Festival. I remember hearing about it and I was so thrilled to see it. For me it was like a dream come true - I was just so hoping it would reflect his original comic book artwork and it did. It was a real groundbreaker." El ilustrador Raymond Briggs hace un homenaje gráfico a la relación de sus padres y cuenta la historia del matrimonio desde que se conocen hasta el fallecimiento de ambos. Y, mientras tanto, sucede el siglo XX. Ethel y Ernest es un retrato personal, sí, pero también lo es de una clase social: la de los ingleses de clase trabajadora que experimentaron las penurias de dos guerras mundiales y sus consecuencias. Entre tazas de té nos narran los avances de la sociedad y, con un humor muy británico, ironizan sobre la modernidad, las revoluciones sociales y los inventos que fueron llegando a los hogares para hacer las vidas más fáciles. En esta historia también se habla mucho sobre la paternidad: sobre volcar las ilusiones en los hijos y que después sus sueños sean distintos a lo que se proyectó para ellos, sobre crecer posicionándose en contra de todo lo que se mamó.

He was born in Wimbledon, south-west London, to Ethel (nee Bowyer) and Ernest Briggs. Their first meeting is beautifully described in the wordless opening sequence of the book devoted to their story. Ethel, a young parlour maid in a Belgravia house, had been innocently shaking out her duster from an upper window as Ernest passed by on his bicycle and confidently returned what he took to be a friendly wave.The characteristic that the journalist John Walsh described in a 2012 interview as a very English “strenuous curmudgeonliness” had become in later years a stereotype that Briggs embraced, exemplified by his column in the Oldie, Notes from the Sofa, collected in book form in 2015, where he would rail against sundry incomprehensible aspects of modern life. For author and illustrator Posy Simmonds, there is an immense power to Briggs' storytelling approach. Ethel e Ernest si conoscono per caso. Lei è una governante, lui un lattaio. Si innamorano e si sposano. Costruiscono la loro famiglia in una casa in cui hanno vissuto insieme per tutta una vita. Briggs is a very famous British children's author, which I didn't realize until after I finished reading this graphic novel. It didn't surprise me though, because the rich illustrations reminded me of books I'd read as a child. They were fabulous! A tribute to his parents, this is their love story. Such prejudices, still not entirely eradicated today, were commonplace at art schools of the time. Although he bemoaned his tutors’ failure to recognise a “natural illustrator”, the formal training that he received imbued in Briggs a strong sense of structure and of the importance of good draughtsmanship. These equipped him well in book illustration, although he left the Slade with what he saw as a poor sense of colour and a dislike of paint. When he eventually arrived at the film version of The Snowman, he expressed pleasure at how it so faithfully and painstakingly replicated his coloured-pencil technique, despite the massively labour-intensive approach that this necessitated.

As with all Briggs’s subsequent titles, the book is full of autobiographical elements and references. His own childhood home and Loch Fyne holidays appear regularly and he himself pops up in the follow-up, Father Christmas Goes on Holiday (1975). I adore this fictionalized true story. 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. Briggs’s illustrations are full of humor, marvelous detail, and obvious love for the people who inspired the title characters. Met deze strip sloot ik de cyclus van de vier graphic novels/strips, die autobiografisch of sterk autobiografische elementen bevatten, af: The Snowman, Gentleman Jim, When the Wind Blows en deze.I cannot give a proper review for this book and I will leave the plot empty because if I write anymore I will spoiled this short book for you. I find it interesting how different each decade appears in this book and how easily our opinions changes during our life. For Example, when Hitler first came into power, Raymond parents didn't find him horrible and liked him. But immediately when he started invading Europe and sending Jews to death camps, they realize that he needs to be stopped or he can conquer and destroy England. We also get to see Ethel and Ernest's reaction to the invention of the television and how it feels like being inside a movie theater in your own home. But perhaps the most powerful motivation was a hatred of injustice by authority toward the powerless and naively respectful common man. The latter could be seen most directly in When the Wind Blows (1982), Briggs’s examination of an elderly couple’s attempts to follow government guidelines as nuclear war breaks out; and The Tin-Pot General and the Old Iron Woman (1984), a thinly disguised General Leopoldo Galtieri and Margaret Thatcher. Briggs admits it was a difficult book to write, particularly the parts that depicted the deaths of his parents in hospital. Lo stile di Raymond Briggs non rientra nei miei preferiti, ma devo dire che più andavo avanti con la storia, più questi disegni tondi e pieni con questi colori pacati mi sembravano adatti, anzi, perfetti, per la storia autobiografica raccontata dall’autore. Briggs says: "[The couple are] somewhat like my parents but I like to think my parents weren't quite as dim as they are. But they have to be dim to follow Protect and Survive."