Angels on Horseback
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€18.50
Thelwell really understood the English countryside, its animals and people, and appraised with sympathetic eye both horses and the horsey. That is why his drawings adorn the studies of some of the fiercest Master of Fox Hounds in the country as well a being sure pin-up material in many Pony Club Members' dens. The angels in Angels on Horseback are children but there is plenty here about their parents. Both for readers of Punch who knew Thelwell, and those who did not meet him before, this book is a savoury at all time but especially after attending a gymkhana. J. B. Boothroyd writes in the Foreword: 'Punch has had equestrian artists before. In mid-Victorian times it was difficult to open a copy without being trampled. But the creations between the present covers achieve something entirely new: they combine portraiture with caricature, a thing which most artists would hesitate to try with human beings, let alone the more temperamentally elusive and psychologically inscrutable horse. This means that while no horse could possibly look exactly like a Thelwell horse, all Thelwell horses manage to look exactly like horses.'
Norman Thelwell was born in Birkenhead in 1923. War service involved foot-slogging with the East Yorkshires and art editing an army magazine in India. He studied art at Liverpool, taught it for seven years in Wolverhampton then became a full-time cartoonist and a household name soon afterwards. For many years he lived with his wife and children in a Hampshire cottage within fly-casting distance of the River Test. Norman Thelwell died in 2004.