Ethel & Ernest

By Raymond Briggs. Published by Jonathan Cape

Softcover, 104 pages, Colour, 1998. 

A marvellous, life-enhancing book for all ages, now a major animated film starring Jim Broadbent, Brenda Blethyn and Luke Treadaway

Utterly original, deeply moving and very funny, Ethel & Ernest tells the story of Raymond Briggs' parents' marriage, lady's maid Ethel and milkman Ernest, from their first chance encounter in 1928, through the birth of their son Raymond in 1934, to their deaths, within months of each other, in 1971.

Told in Brigg`s unique strip-cartoon format, Ethel and Ernest live through the defining moments of the twentieth century: the darkness of the Great Depression, the build up to World War II, the trials of the war years, the euphoria of VE Day and the emergence of a generation from post war austerity to the cultural enlightenment of the 1960s.

Ethel & Ernest is a heartfelt and affectionate tribute to an ordinary couple and an extraordinary generation.

• Briggs has always had the ability to move his readers, but never more powerfully than this.

• As our memory of pre-Niketown Britain fades, we should be grateful that Raymond Briggs is so brilliantly equipped to remind us of what we used to be, and why.

• Ethel & Ernest imparts, as the best novels do, the sense of lived lives. It’s not too much to say you come to love these people... Briggs’ book earns our tears. Ethel & Ernest is a just about perfect miniature: small in scale, not in spirit.