Gentleman Jim

Product Information

It led to the much-loved animated short film, which is still broadcast on television every Christmas, and a musical adaptation which is staged almost as often.

Jim is one of his most engaging characters - not especially bright, and with only a limited understanding of the world around him, but a romantic idealist who means well despite his behaviour. If you, or your children, have seen or, ideally, read the Snowman than I can pretty much garuntee you will like this book. But the authority figures look like cruel, vicious robots, and all largely the same as one another; utterly impersonal.But two years later in 1980, with Gentleman Jim, Raymond Briggs pulled another rabbit out of the hat. However, Briggs continued to produce humour for children, in works such as the Unlucky Wally series and The Bear. Jim's various run-ins with authority are amusing, but the humour gets progressively black as he ends up before a magistrate and ends up in jail, still cleaning the toilets (he's an expert, after all) and apparently oblivious to the fact that being literally imprisoned isn't much worse than the metaphorical prison he was in at the beginning of the book. His first three major works, Father Christmas, Father Christmas Goes on Holiday (both featuring a curmudgeonly Father Christmas who complains incessantly about the "blooming snow"), and Fungus the Bogeyman, were in the form of comics rather than the typical children's-book format of separate text and illustrations.

It's a fairly straightforward story, and it's not spoiling much to say that Jim dreams of pursuing a few professions, tries unsuccessfully to be a cowboy, and ultimately fails spectacularly in being a highwayman.Jim's flights of fancy are very lushly illustrated (they break out of the panel format completely) and put me in mind of Walter Mitty's daydreams.

Later, the author was to feature Jim and Hilda Bloggs again as the main characters in his masterly, very dark book about about nuclear catastrophe, “When The Wind Blows”.

Initially his attempts to seek adventure are amusing, but once you realise that he is such a simple man, the story becomes bittersweet: despite the gentle, positive personality of the protagonist, the reader is left feeling crushed on their behalf. But the real world does not work like that, and increasingly he is subjected to an endless procession of petty officials marching into his life, and a succession of authority figures bringing all manner of threats, trouble and summonses. Een graphic novel met humor, een tikje melancholisch en een einde waar mijn hart een beetje van brak. He tries so hard to make things good, is intentions are top notch but he isn't that bright has a few problems getting exactly what he wants. We are delighted to bring it back into print as the first book in an occasional series, Cape Graphic Classics.

The satire and humour become more caustic at this point, as the target expands from the dumb naivete of the protagonist to the cold, harsh authoritarianism of the real world; if this is what the world is like, Jim's desire to escape into a boys' adventure book version of the world is understandable. Either that, or “Father Christmas”, which followed the next year, and featured his popular creation of a curmudgeonly Father Christmas, complaining endlessly about the “bloomin’ snow”. His imagining of being a cowboy then a highway man were just too simple-minded to be believable, not funny to me but rather I thought he was a sad man to think he might understand more about the world if he could get a modern education. His work has won numerous awards and been adapted for film on several occasions including Ethel and Ernest.With this playful style, Briggs expertly transforms common feelings of inadequacy into an endearing and enjoyable experience that speaks across generations, concluding with an optimistic implication that even a misfortunate outcome can be better than no change at all. Jim can’t afford the boots, and the gun dealer wants to see both his certificate and an export licence. English illustrator Raymond Briggs is best known in Britain for his 'books without words', told entirely though full color illustrations. Now, I admit, it is a little sad towards the end and I can honestly say I've never felt truely sorry for a character in a book, apart from Jim.