BOOK (1982)
When the Wind Blows by Raymond Briggs Hamish Hamilton
The explosion takes four pages to portray. As this is a graphic novel, there's no need for words. Raymond Briggs simply paints a blinding flash of white light that obliterates everything in sight. In fact, this is precisely what a nuclear bomb has just done: destroyed the British mainland in a single blast.
We have been following the humdrum lives of James and Hilda Bloggs, an affectionate and average couple in late middle age. They make tea, eat a dinner of sausages and potatoes and prepare for the end of the world: an all-out nuclear war after international relations break down. Following The Householder's Guide to Survival, Jim whitewashes the windows, shops - unsuccessfully - for provisions and builds a shelter out of a couple of flimsy doors. When he's unsure if he's got the angle right, Hilda reminds him a job worth doing is worth doing well. 'Yes, dear, but it is only temporary ... After all, it will all be over in a flash.'
Briggs extracts profound pathos from the couple's innocence about the fate that awaits them - something the title catches with its allusion to the nursery rhyme. After a nostalgic chat about the second world war, the Bloggs try to comprehend what the next conflict will be like. 'I think this one is called the Big Bang Theory,' Jim says, ironically confusing ends with beginnings. 'Well, we survived the last one,' Hilda replies. 'We can do it again. It'll take more than a few bombs to get me down.'
Briggs intercuts the Bloggs' chatter with images of nuclear warheads being readied. It is a prophetic foreshadowing of how the minutiae of local life will be destroyed by a remote realpolitik. Although the portents are clear, the apocalypse comes with hardly any warning: Jim and Hilda are in the middle of an argument when the radio announces the end of days in three minutes. They dive beneath their shelter, and Hilda's final words are: 'The cake will be burned.'
The reader turns the page and is met by a centrefold of that blinding white light. As the eyes adjust to the glare, it becomes apparent the edges are tinged pinkish red, as if a world of blood is threatening to overflow. The explosion continues on the next page. The flash gradually darkens, and we see Jim and Hilda's bodies amid the debris. The storm fades. The silence is eventually broken, in Jim's inimitable style: 'Blimey.'
The rest of the story details the couple's slow descent into illness and death, and the poignancy of the final pages is almost unbearable.
Published in 1982, When the Wind Blows reflected a fear of nuclear war that was all-too real. Today, this dread has multiplied a hundredfold: according to recent reports, North Korea is the latest nation to be enriching uranium. Briggs' vision hasn't dated one iota. Read it and weep.
