JP Martin's much-loved but unavailable stories have been recovered for the rest of us by one courageous readerLet joy be unconfined! Almost seven years ago, I bewailed the loss of Uncle, the wealthy, purple-clad elephant with the BA whose surreal adventures, superbly illustrated by Quentin Blake, delighted many lucky child readers of the 60s and 70s. Despite the anarchic hilarity of Uncle's long-running feud with the Badfort crowd, and the ferocious loyalty of his fans, the series inexplicably dropped out of print. And while copies of the first two books remained relatively easy to come by, the never-reprinted later volumes, including Treacle Trouble and Claudius the Camel, changed hands only for sums worthy of the plutocratic pachyderm himself. But last year Marcus Gipps, Gollancz editor and hardcore Uncle geek, stepped up with a Kickstarter to bolster the wobbliest faith in human endeavour. Raising nearly £30,000 – over four times the original target – and using the day job's skills and reach, Gipps brought us an Uncle omnibus containing all six books, every scrap of original illustration and new introductory material by such high-profile fans as Garth Nix and Neil Gaiman. This beauty doesn't come cheap – even Amazon aren't offering it at much under £40 – but considering a full set of Uncle books would formerly set you back about £800, I consider it a ridiculous bargain.Now diehard fans can introduce a new generation of readers to the gently pompous patriarch and his... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2014-01-10 00:00:00 UTC ]