272 pgs. color | $34.99 hardcover | W & A: Hervé Bourhis
If the United States and England are two countries separated by a common language, as George Bernard Shaw is reputed to have said, we’re also separated by a diverging history exemplified by our national experiences during and after World War II. For Americans, it was a war fought elsewhere followed by an unprecedented period of economic expansion and prosperity; for the British, it was a war that left them with destroyed cities, 70,000 civilian casualties, and a nearly bankrupt economy. The latter is the world in which the precocious and ambitious Jenny Mellor (Carey Mulligan) comes of age in Lorne Scherfig’s An Education—an England that in 1961 had not yet begun to swing.
That all changed in 1962: the Beatles recorded their first hit, the Rolling Stones played their first show, Dr. No featuring Sean Connery and Ursula Andress set the tone for the first great series of James Bond films, and boutiques on Carnaby Street featured new fashion trends that were adopted worldwide. England was swinging, and the so-called British Invasion of American pop culture was underway.
French comics creator Hervé Bourhis, a lifelong fan of British culture, made regular pilgrimages across the Channel until the pandemic made such travel impossible. In frustration, he put his talents to use writing down everything he loved and hated about the country he could no longer visit (while listening to The Kinks, of course), and The British Invasion was the result. It begins in 1962 and runs until 2022, the latter year marked not only by the loosening of pandemic restrictions but by the end of another era: the longest reign of any British monarch came to an end with the death of Elizabeth II, who was succeeded by her son Charles III.
Bourhis devotes four pages to each year, and further subdivides his text by decades. The first page and last pages for each year are devoted to a single event: usually musical for the first page, and non-musical for the last, with the other two pages containing smaller images and text commemorating other things that happened that year. For 1987, to take an example, the opening page is devoted to The Smiths’ album The Queen is Dead, the last to mad cow disease, and the middle to pages to a variety of events including the final performances by Freddie Mercury with Queen, shoe designer Jimmy Choo opening his first store in London, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons creating Watchmen for DC Comics, and racing car driver Nigel Mansell being named BBC Sports Personality of the Year.
The British Invasion is referred to in press materials as a “little square book,” a style of book Bourhis has created before, but I feel honor-bound to mention that while it is indeed square, it is not little in the sense of being something you could slip in your pocket. Instead, at 9” by 9” it’s more like a small coffee table book perfect for providing guests with something fun to page through while you’re in the kitchen making lunch. You can open it to any page and find something interesting to read, but it will never strain your brain or make you feel like you’re having a nightmare flashback to your high school World History class. I learned quite bit from reading The British Invasion, and recalled even more, with the chronological approach providing a useful reminder about how many seemingly unrelated events happened in any single year.
Whether you connect with Bourhis’ art is a matter of taste, because he has a consistent style that is instantly recognizable and unquestionably lively but which I found wearying. His style features blocks of loud colors and realistic yet simplified drawings that resemble digitally altered photos. The result is that while the production values for The British Invasion are undoubtedly high, the pages have the feel of an in-your-face zine that was somehow reproduced in full color and in book format. The key to enjoying this book may be to dip into it rather than trying to read it straight through, so the bold and simplified images and historical tidbits feel energetic rather than assaultive and the consistent organization and layout of the pages feels efficient rather than repetitive. | Sarah Boslaugh
*TheFrench title Le Brit Book is actually more apt, since few would agree that the British Invasion lasted until 2022.
You can see a sample of the artwork for The British Invasion on the nbm website.
