The British Character

Tea, dogs, and the terrible fear of drawing attention to oneself: Pont's cartoons of the late 1930s caught the British at their most recognisable, and they have been quoted ever since.

Pont was Graham Laidler (1908–1940), an architect by training who became one of Punch's best-loved artists. The British Character began as a series in the magazine and was gathered into a book in 1938, with an introduction by E. M. Delafield, whose Diary of a Provincial Lady had made her the sharpest comic chronicler of English middle-class living.

The drawings sit under headings that are jokes in themselves – Breeding, The Empire Spirit, Love of Animals, Social Sense, Rural, Travel, Sport – and they lampoon and champion in the same stroke: the passion for detective stories, the horror of the unfamiliar, the small hypocrisies of class and manners. Laidler died of polio in 1940, at thirty-two, leaving only three collections behind him, which is part of why these pages are still so treasured.

This edition features:

• The complete 1938 collection of Pont's drawings, arranged in the original ten themed sections
• An introduction by E. M. Delafield, the comic novelist behind the Diary of a Provincial Lady
• Cartoons on breeding, the arts, the Empire spirit, love of animals, social sense, and sport
• The work of one of Punch's most quoted artists, whose career was cut short at the age of thirty-two
• A wry portrait of British manners, class, and social habit on the eve of the Second World War

Read & Co. Books is proud to republish The British Character in a new edition, with the original artwork and Delafield's introduction.