Winter Joys

When the days are drawing in, it’s easier to feel winter blues than winter joys, but we can change all that. Give your friends a copy of Very Heath Robinson, send out Heath Robinson Christmas Cards and you’ll banish all woes. We will help you make it happen.

We have a winter joys offer for you. If you order a copy of Very Heath Robinson from our website before 20th December, we’ll send you a complimentary pack of six Heath Robinson Christmas Cards worth £6.95. Sign up for free as a member and you’ll get 25% off the book. That’s a saving of £10, and post and packing are free.

Joy in the drawings
With Heath Robinson you don’t just get winter joys, you get joy unbounded, spring, summer and autumn. If you’re in any doubt about this, listen to Adam Hart-Davis. He dedicates the book not just to Heath Robinson enthusiasts but ‘With anticipatory delight to those who have not yet set eyes on a Heath Robinson drawing, and are to experience the immense joy of doing so’.

H. G. Wells, author of The War of the Worlds, put it like this. ‘I have been ill and frightfully bored,’ he wrote to Heath Robinson in 1914, ‘and the one thing I have wanted is a big album of your absurd beautiful drawings to turn over. You give me a peculiar pleasure of the mind like nothing else in the world.’

Pleasure in the details
Take a look at this Heath Robinson Christmas Card. The caption reads Winter Joys in the Parks. When war broke out in 1939, people could no longer ski in the Alps. No worry, thinks Heath Robinson, why not recreate your winter holiday in the local park? Instead of hurtling down a glacier, you can perfectly happily ski down a tarmac path spread with melted butter. Even the dog can join in. Look again and you see that a make-shift toboggan slide and ice rink are going down a treat. To complete the Alpine picture, the kindly woman at the food stall is selling Swiss milk and Swiss rolls. The birds waiting for crumbs off the table are poignantly hopeful. It’s absurd, but it’s delightful.

Hart-Davis and Pullman
In this book you don’t just get Heath Robinson, you get two thoughtful and accomplished writers with a feel for history. Together Adam Hart-Davis and Philip Pullman take you on a romp through the machine age. ‘It’s a world that doesn’t exist any more,’ says Philip Pullman, ‘because it’s entirely mechanical. You can read how it works by looking at it and tracing this lever and that pulley and this handle and seeing what happens when they move. Our world isn’t mechanical any more and it’s lost a lot of charm in the process of becoming digital.’ With Hart-Davis and Pullman as your guides you can escape into a world where anything can be fixed with a couple of cog wheels and a few bits of string. Analogue heaven.

Order Very Heath Robinson and you’re assured of winter joys. Send out a few Heath Robinson Christmas Cards and you’ll spread harmless pleasure.