Bryan Talbot - Alice in Sunderland (2007)

Book Review

Given my love of history, it came as something of a surprise to me that I hadn’t given much thought to Sunderland’s own history. Perhaps, not being a born-and-bred Wearsider myself, I may have had that all-too-familiar idea that many around the country seem to have – that it’s something of a second city to Newcastle-upon-Tyne. While this is arguably true in some respects, it certainly hasn’t always been this way. As such, this book, by Wigan-born graphic novelist (okay, comic artist, then) Bryan Talbot was a major eye-opener for me. And yet it shouldn’t have been so, as the clues were all there for me – for three years, I studied in a building right next to the oldest church in England, so I should have been aware that the place had some history.

Talbot’s book weighs in at a little over 300 pages and deals with two major subjects – Sunderland, and Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. The two, we find, are indelibly linked. A third topic also rears its head, which is that of the comic, clearly an art that Talbot holds in great reverence. Not so much linked to the others, but links of a sort can be seen.

Stylistically, the book is a mix of numerous comic styles, some presumably Talbot’s own; others imitated, such as Hergé’s instantly recognisable style from the Tintin books. The book opens with the vision of a man, possibly Talbot himself, entering Sunderland’s Empire Theatre. A White Rabbit rushes past him, only to appear on the stage before his eyes – or is this another version of our author, in a mask? This, whoever it might be, is our narrator – and he takes us through various facets of his chosen topics, links them together from numerous angles, with some wonderful surprises along the way – about Sunderland, Alice and comics.

It’s the first subject, Sunderland and its history, that appeals most to me. I’d had no idea of the richness of the City’s past. It links many people to the area – Lewis Carroll, Lawrence of Arabia, Charles Dickens and Sir Henry Irving, the first actor to receive a knighthood for his work. We’re taken through many of the episodes of the past, from the cholera epidemic of 1831 to the reluctant fame of national hero Jack Crawford, whose statue currently stands in Mowbray Park. We find out the origins of the two cannons that flank Sir Henry Havelock on Building Hill in the same park, as well as where the single cannon in Barnes Park came from. We find out much about Sunderland’s landmarks, from Penshaw Monument to the artworks at the Marina. This is the tip of the iceberg, however.

The Alice in Wonderland angle has much to do with Sunderland. Carroll himself lived in and around Sunderland, as did the influential family of Alice Liddell, the girl for whom Carroll invented his famous daydreamer. That’s not where the connections end, however – Carroll’s fabulous poem, The Jabberwocky, was completed in Sunderland and bears some similarities to the famous local legend of the Lambton Worm.

The Comic angle is interesting. Not content with keeping the idea of the comic to graphic novels or strip-cartoons, he sees it as the idea of telling a story with pictures. He cites Hogarth’s Gin Lane and Beer Street as examples of the genre, as well as the Bayeaux Tapestry.

All of this is beautifully and cleverly put together, and it certainly doesn’t require an interest in all of the topics covered to appreciate it. I can imagine that even a born-and-bred Mackem would find much surprising in this book. It goes to show how little we can be aware of our history, and indeed of the wonderful things that can be found in our locality, wherever that might be, simply because we have not taken the time to look. As a result, I don’t see Sunderland as subordinate to Newcastle now, as I might have done in the past.