T​he Ancient Brit with Bags of Grit? How anglicised Asterix came to UK (original) (raw)

Before British readers could properly enjoy Asterix the Gaul and his sweet-natured friend Obelix they had to make do with Little Fred, the Ancient Brit with Bags of Grit, and his sidekick, Big Ed.

The crude and little-known anglicisation of a French national hero is shown in an exhibition opening in London on Thursday, exploring the life and work of the writer René Goscinny.

There are original artworks, scripts and storyboards, but fans of Asterix might be surprised to see pages from British comics in which the hero is a proud Brit: Little Fred in one, Beric the Bold in another.

“They are essentially forgotten now,” said the curator, Joanne Rosenthal. “These were serialised versions of Asterix, which came out in the early to mid-1960s, just after Asterix, in kids’ comics like Valiant, Ranger, Look & Learn.”

They are a “a footnote of history” but fascinating nevertheless, particularly since the characters seem slightly different to the ones most people are familiar with. Rosenthal added: “It’s a bit coarser, it is not quite as gentle or soft as the English translations we know.”

The Asterix exhibition is at the Jewish Museum and tells the story of Goscinny’s life and career and his biggest success: the creation, with cartoonist Albert Uderzo, of Asterix, the ancient Gaul who, with his friends, took on the might of Roman occupiers in 50BC.

The Asterix books have sold 500m copies worldwide, been translated into 150 languages and adapted into 100 films. But the story of Goscinny himself has been underexplored, the museum believes.

“Not many people know about Goscinny’s Jewish heritage and it is a very interesting story,” said Rosenthal. “We wanted to tell it.”

Goscinny was born in Paris in 1926 to Eastern European Jewish immigrant parents. He spent his childhood in Argentina, growing up as a French expat child, before moving to New York in 1945, hoping to make it as a cartoonist.

On display is a copy of a 1948 letter to the New Yorker magazine complaining that he had still not heard anything after submitting five cartoons. He never made it in the US.

His success came in France with creations including a gunslinger called Lucky Luke, a detective called Dick Dicks, and a taxi driver called Strapontin who will cheerfully go anywhere. In one story he travels to Africa, where he teams up with a gorilla who has taken an intelligence serum and can speak Latin. They go in search of the kidnapped son of Professor Petipois.

Asterix was by far the biggest success, with its broad appeal to readers of all ages. It was not low brow or high brow, said Rosenthal. “The humour is very sophisticated and works on so many different levels. There is the slapstick element that younger readers might enjoy, but also the very finely tuned and nuanced cultural references that draw on national mythologies and historical incidents.”

The exhibition argues that Goscinny’s Jewishness was important in his work, if not explicitly then subtly. “To a certain extent it is kind of speculation,” said Rosenthal. “But I think the sense of humour, the sense of the outsider, the underdog, the immigrant, that kind of diasporist experience he had is just everywhere in his output in a way it often is with secular Jewish artists and writers.”