The Dark Side Calling.

It has become quite common in some circles to blame the state of modern society on the 1960's. These years, the argument says, undermined all of the tenets that society had come to rely on. Respect for elders, monogamy and obedience to the forces of law and order all went out of the window and the world began it's accelerated descent into heck.
Now, a passing knowledge of history would reveal that to be a vastly overrated estimation of the importance of those decades, but there is a theme that became more and more popular in the sixties and shows no signs of dying off- the "Bad Boy". The outsider who does not play by societies rules and, in fact, makes their own rules. The person who invites out sneaking admiration by living their own life in their own way.
The burgeoning film industries around the world found lucrative subjects to explore in the exploits of these misfits but from the earliest times, it has not been pure invention that has put anti-heroes into the public mind. Author Rosemary Sutcliff has said of Greek History "In a time of heroes who cannot be looked at it terms of black or white, none is more determinedly piebald than Alcibiades".
The trait seems to be part of human nature that most people can over-ride in the interest of a quite life yet the characteristic attitude slows no sign of dying out.
My own favourite "Bad Boy" is in truth a boy since he is the 11 year old William Brown.
William has all of the attributes of the classic rebel, he feels that society is wilful and mean, he cannot see any logic behind the rules and he finds the impositions it places upon him completely impossible to obey. He has a laser-like ability to cut through our adult euphemisms and evasions.
When his great Grandmother is dying, William accompanies his mother to the deathbed and when he is left alone with the old woman he asks "I'm just wondering if you are going, because if you're not I have to get back and feed my animals because I think Ginger might forget."
Most of William's schemes end in catastrophe yet he is indomitable and his confidence is undented.
I have great regard and even love for William but, as a parent, I can see that he would be a cause of great concern. But perhaps that is the reason for the continuing popularity of the "Bad Boys", we can experience their lives and travails without having to take responsibility for them.

The Victor picture.

Possibly the expression that books have given the the world that has made the biggest impact on the culture is  the one about not judging books by their visual representation. Yet we do and possibly most ironically of all we do it to books, a lot.
A lot of time and money goes into researching what consumers like to see on book covers and react to the most favourably and one assumes that that money would not continue to be spent if there weren't concrete results to point to.
It makes sense to the buyer because of the tactile experiences that are involved in buying a book. The look and the feel and even the smell add to the pleasure of owning the book. A friend sent me one of his poetry books that is an experience in itself without even opening it.
But mostly it comes down the front picture that catches us and holds us, maybe, in the mass markets, for that extra second that decides us one way or the next.
After we own the book the cover becomes the mental picture that we associate with "that story" just as we do not think "shoe" but "that thing that goes on my foot"
We may even get extra insight into the book by looking at the cover while with other books the cover is like a condensed version of the whole story and it is like a grown up version of "Where's Wally?" to see what is going on. The best example of that would be Josh Kirby's illustrations for Terry Pratchett's Discworld stories.
But the illustrator that I want to write about today is Victor Ambrus. He was born in Hungary but fled to England in 1956 following the unsuccessful revolution, apparently having just escaped from a collapsing building at one stage.
His historical illustrations appear to have been in demand from the time he left Art School. He quickly became established and became a free-lance artist with a back up of lecturing from 1963 to 1985 at Art colleges.
The author that is most associated with Ambrus's art in my mind is Rosemary Sutcliff. Her historical fiction fit in very well with Ambrus's illustrations.
I think the reason that Ambrus's work is so suited to historical fiction is because of the feeling that we get from the pictures of the everyday life that is somehow captured by the slightly imprecise lines of the figures.
You can see that the shoes that someone has on are not very clean or their helmet has been battered around a bit. And while there is that impreciseness it is only slightly so, in the lines of the drawings, the clothes and weapons that are being used are absolutely true to the time.
Similarly the people are not all TV series good looking because, most people aren't, and they seem to belong to the times they are in.
Similarly the style of drawing lends itself well to a windswept landscape where it is not very warm. The people in the illustrations seem to belong where they are.
This has all stood Victor Ambrus in good stead in his job as the illustrator of the Channel 4 series "Time Team"  where his sketches show us how the various objects, buildings and sometimes people fit all together and he has lost none of his ability to convey his imagination onto paper.