Drawing Breath

By Dicky HowettDrawingbreath
Publisher: Miwk
ISBN: 9781908630636

All of you will have come across a Dicky Howett cartoon at some point, and some of you older members will no doubt have raised a glass with him in the old Cartoonist pub in Shoe Lane, back when he was a member of the club.

Dicky’s biography is full of cartooning anecdotes, from his early days in gag cartoons to his long-running Doctor Who? strip in Doctor Who Magazine, with publications as diverse as Club International and Marvel Super Heroes (largely a UK packaging of US material).

But where Dicky’s talent was cartooning, his passion was television, and not least the cameras and equipment going back to the early days of the BBC. While gag cartooning has become a smaller and smaller market to sell to, Dicky’s enthusiasm and knowledge of vintage BBC kit has developed from a hobby to a serious business. His growing collection, and that of a friend, is so comprehensive and well-maintained that Dicky now hires out the kit, and himself, to TV and film productions. Speilberg’s Munich, the recent Making Of Dad’s Army story starring John Sessions, Call The Midwife, The Hour and An Adventure In Time And Space all benefited from Dicky’s extensive equipment.

Dicky, then, has had two intriguing careers with which to regale us with witticisms and observations, making for a book full of warm retrospection and a fascinating record of a cartooning world from the recent past. This could have been a melancholy tome for all that, but Dicky constantly is looking forward to the next challenge and you very much get the feeling he’s not done yet.

And if you liked that: You’re bound to then enjoy It’s Even Bigger On The Inside, by Dicky Howett and Tim Quinn

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