When the Wind Blows

"Yes, it is very sad and depressing. But it is so tender, isn’t it? You have this totally domestic scenario between two sweet old people, Jim and Hilda Bloggs, who are still caught up in the nostalgia of World War II. It exposes the ridiculousness of the government’s ideas about how to survive a nuclear war. They survive the initial attack and then die of radiation sickness. So for me this haunting graphic novel was a tender and tragic counterpart to the epic battles of Judge Dredd, and all the more memorable as a result. Reading this during the 1980s, with the threat of nuclear war hanging over my childhood as a sort of omnipresent background hum of anxiety, I couldn’t help but think of the possible fate of my own grandparents. I must have been about ten when I found it in the school library and it was quite a sobering thing to read. There are no heroics in it, none of the action-packed adventures of Judge Dredd. Instead, you see that there is no chance of survival so it made you reflect more profoundly on what a nuclear war would mean. I remember that my parents had this Reaganish book, which they got when we lived in America for a couple of years when I was quite young, called something like How to Survive a Nuclear War , and it was an American survivalist handbook which I was quite fascinated by. It had all these techniques about how to defend your house should you be attacked. I took great comfort from this book – it made me believe that if I had clean water, tinned food, medical equipment and a rifle I could survive nuclear war. But Briggs’s book smashed that belief. We lived just outside London and I would often sit there thinking, are we just far enough away not to be vaporised when they vaporise London?"

"I’m not even sure it’s a children’s book. I hear it was read by lots of MPs at the time and was made into an animated film that I don’t think many parents would want their children to have watched. I mean, is it a children’s book? Is it, perhaps, an inappropriate choice? I don’t know. But it’s a comic, and it was definitely available in the children’s section last time I looked. Whilst I stand by my point that one of the great things about children’s literature is that it’s often hopeful, I also think great children’s literature can sometimes just tell it like it is. We’re seeing a trend in that recently. Some recent prize-winning books haven’t been so hopeful. For example, The Bunker Diary , which won the Carnegie prize in 2014, is one of the darkest books I’ve ever read. And I think children can cope with darkness. The anti-nuclear message of When the Wind Blows is such an important one that I think Briggs was right not to sugar-coat it. But the reason why I picked it isn’t just because it was an anti-nuclear message, and I was obsessed … or I am obsessed with post-apocalyptic and anti-nuclear books. The reason why I pick it is because there is beauty in the relationship of the couple at the heart of the book. There is love and affection, and it’s that love and affection that is wiped out by this nuclear holocaust. In a way, keeping it very small—rather than showing the end of the world, by just showing the end of this couple—brings us something tremendously powerful. I mean, what an act of genius. I’ve used that word a couple of times today, but actually, I think some of these writers are geniuses. I think telling stories that move us and make a point about the human condition, or society, is work that we should all aspire to do. I’m in awe of these people. I’m literally in awe of these people."