Re: The Pages of Punch

1938: Powerful Personality

The woman calling herself Anton has exactly caught the interplay between the dominant man on the right and the cowering wimp on the left. Forcing is the last thing that the bridge partner is in the habit of doing.

Re: The Pages of Punch

1938: An Old Joke Revisited

Just look at the size of that trunk. I wonder how that is going to be transported to their holiday destination.

Yes, porters would have loaded the thing onto and off the train. How about getting to the station? Were black cabs equipped to carry that monster? I’m not saying that they weren’t. I’m simply asking.

Re: The Pages of Punch

1938: In the Photographer’s Studio

She is being put at her ease. The message is that if she doesn’t like the photo nobody else need ever see it. This seems an odd subject for a joke.

Re: The Pages of Punch

1938: Made to Measure

I rather think that bespoke was still the order of the day in 1938. Or, perhaps, Montagu Burton had already pioneered the ready to wear – cheaper – alternative.

Re: The Pages of Punch

1938: Self-Mockery

I am assuming that this cartoon refers to some official British pronouncement about the increasingly bellicose policies of Nazi Germany. The elderly gent is addressing a fellow member of his club and seems to think that Britain’s standing in the world is still what it had been in the days of his youth. The cartoon leaves us in no doubt that this is regarded as pure fantasy.

Re: The Pages of Punch

1938: East is West

Here is another joke in which current concepts are inaccurately (and deliberately) translated into an alien milieu.

The ‘kiddies’ seem all to be very much the same age. Some mistake here!

Re: The Pages of Punch

1938: Ask a Silly Question…

This cartoon belongs to a long-standing tradition in which professionals reprove amateurs for asking questions when they won’t understand the correct answers.

Re: The Pages of Punch

1938: A Permanent Obsession

I know that I am sticking my neck out by venturing into unfamiliar territory.

Even so, my reading of this cartoon is that she asks this question all the time even when, as in this instance, it can’t possibly be relevant. I wonder if young women of her age today would even know what a petticoat actually is.

Re: The Pages of Punch

1938: Two Different Worlds

The young man doesn’t understand anything outside his own privileged world. The shepherd can’t really grasp what the question is about. What matters to him is that he is earning his living which seems to be satisfactory. What he sees is a young man who is aimlessly mooning about. And that really is boring.

Re: The Pages of Punch

1938: A Suitable Film

The cinema goer takes her dog everywhere and can’t see the problem. Not only is it a U film but it has an interesting title: Milk White and the Nine Cats. It is even being advertised on a passing bus. We all know which film is being parodied…