Battler Britton (volume 2)

Battler Britton, Book 2 by Anon

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I was thinking the other day about how to write “funny” (stay with me, this will make sense soon I promise…). For me, funny books have to have a sense of utter conviction about them. You have to believe in every inch of them and the “funny” needs to be legitimately earned and unremarkable, in a way. It’s the kind of thing that if you turn to the viewer and point it out, then you lose it. If you do a knowing little wink when it happens, you lose it. What you have to do is believe in it and the world that you have created and know that what you’re having there is simply what happens in this space. And when you have that conviction, that belief, that truth then what you get is an elasticity of a sort which allows the funny to happen, the outlandish to occur, the whimsy to – whim.

And all of that came to mind when I was reading Battler Britton because this book believes every inch of what it is and what it is is remarkable. It is genuinely one of the best things I have read for quite some time and although I don’t want you to think that it’s the highest piece of literature out there (for it is not), I want you to know that this book does, in the vernacular, know itself. It knows every inch of what it is and what it wants to be and because of all of that faith in what it is, you get something rather brilliant. This puts the “gung” in “ho”, the “pat” in “patriotic” and gets you home in time for tea. If you read this to a class at school, back in the fifties, I would not have been surprised to see them scaling the ramparts and attacking the canteen by the close of the day. It is feverishly patriotic, utterly determined in its righteousness, and massively, utterly beguiling because of that.

Robert Hereward (I mean, amazing) Britton is known as “Battler” by his chums and is an ace of air, sea, foot, and everything in between. This compilation sees old Battler (I can’t) fly a plane when its rotor falls off; lassoo another plane in mid-flight so that it can tow his glider (I am not making an inch of this up) and break into a prison camp so he can break out again.

This volume is a mixture of comic strips and prose fiction, with the occasional non-fiction article about planes thrown into the mix. If you imagine an old copy of Eagle, you wouldn’t be far off in the tone and style. The art is all firm chins and purpose and “you’ll never make it Battler” and “I will, by jove” and there’s a bit where he lobs a cricket ball and explodes a bridge and another where he crashes a plane onto a ship and then stands on top of the plane and says “Up and at em, Lads! Remember Nelson!” and I am content in the fact that I am not making any of this up.

I was trying to figure out the difference between Battler and Biggles and I think that, somehow, it’s that air of belief in Battler that works for me (there’s far too many b-‘s in that sentence but I’m going to leave it). Battler Britton knows exactly what it is: a firm reminder that Britain did the good and right thing during the war and you might be suffering still now but remember that somehow, somewhere, we’re still kings of the waves. And the air. And can take down enemies with just a twig and a cricket ball. We’re number one!

It has dated awfully and features more than one or two isms but it wouldn’t ever do anything but. This is a volume tied firmly to that post-war period of recovery, of rebuilding, of remembering who we are and what we stand for and why we made all the sacrifices we did. It’s full of a jaw-dropping bravado, an utter sense of determination, and all delivered at such a fierce pace and with such firm self-belief that it’s difficult to resist.

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