We immediately recognise this lovably quaint and quintessentially British couple, full of that old-fashioned stiff-upper-lip belief that doing what those in charge tell them to do will keep them safe, cheerily making preparations to survive when we know they won’t – it’s heartbreakingly brutal from Briggs. That it’s all useless, that we know that no preparation will keep them safe, that’s where Briggs really turns the emotional screws. Just you be careful, James! I’ll put the screws in a plastic bag. I can soon touch it in again after The Bomb’s gone off.” “You are not going to ruin the paintwork, James!”

Unprepared and confused, they’re helpless as the radio issues dire warnings of the unthinkable and then, faced with imminent nuclear attack, they blindly and naively rely on the government’s inadequate “Protect & Survive” leaflets, James busying himself with constructing shelters from doors, painting their windows white to shield from the blast whilst Hilda frets over the mess he’s making, gathering enough food and water to last them. “Yes, we must always look on the bright side, ducks.” It’ll take more than a few bombs to get me down.” “Well, we survived the last one, we can do it again. “Well, if the worst comes to the worst, we’ll just have to roll up our sleeves, tighten our belts and put on our tin hats till it’s VE day again.” “It looks like there’s going to be a war, dear.” Poor doomed James and Hilda BloggsĪnd even when the news gets darker and darker, with a three-day warning of hostilities, they have this unshakeable optimism, believing that things will be okay as long as they do what they’ve been told, just like it was in the last war. Having retired to their little country idyll, their quant little house that they’ve called ‘Jimilda’, this old-fashioned working-class couple, obviously devoted to each other, potters on doing the simple little things, innocent and ignorant to everything going on in the world beyond them, apart from the reports in the newspaper and on their little radio. The book’s huge emotional impact is due to Briggs’ down-to-earth characters the ruddy-faced James (Jim) and Hilda Bloggs.

When The Wind Blows is a tale of nuclear devastation, viewed from Briggs’ familiar everyman character’s perspective, and is possibly the greatest modern example of speculative graphic fiction and is just as moving and frightening now as it was 28 years ago when first published.

When the Wind Blows by Raymond Briggs