Margaret Crypt, an historian in her 70s, is approached by Lucy, a TV producer in her 30s, to make a series of history programmes with her production company. The two become fast friends despite the age gap - but will their TV project reach fruition?
Joff Winterhart is back with his third book, Dear Historian, which is, like his previous two, about a pair of characters of differing ages and their relationship. And when it is about Margaret and Lucy, the book is great - the problem is that when the book switches focus to the making of the TV show, or about the character’s own lives, it gets kinda boring.
I also don’t buy the premise. Why would a production company sink resources into making a history programme featuring a dry 70-something unknown to talk about an obscure historical figure? And would this same production company have a wildly popular show featuring an ugly, lumpy 50-something Crocodile Hunter-esque historian-adjacent host called Allan Hands - would this really be a big hit with so many people? Perhaps, given he apparently found initial success on YouTube - but then that only begs the question that why Margaret, someone who struggles to even use the internet, would be given a shot over someone with a significant social media following and already established audience on YouTube?
To be fair, I don’t know the state of terrestrial TV - the only times I catch it are when I visit my parents and it's on in the background - so I don’t know if there are still shows like Allan’s that are on TV and are popular. The Hairy Bikers are popular and those two are (were in one case) not the most likely of big stars - but they’re also cooks (I think?) and those kinds of shows tend to be more popular with people than history.
The most important thing though is that the premise brings Margaret and Lucy together and their scenes together are wonderful. Winterhart is superb at characterisation in his stories and his dialogue and keenly-observed body language brings these two main characters to life. They’re convincingly real and their burgeoning friendship is delightful to watch grow.
The other characters though? Not in the least. Winterhart tries with Allan Hands but Allan is simply a loud bore and having to read his dreary, bombastic drivel is as dull as it is for the characters to have to endure. The production meeting scenes, Margaret’s staff meeting scenes/staff socials, the actual filming of the show and hearing about the history of this historical figure are all quite dull to read.
And when Margaret and Lucy separate to their own lives, the energy of their scenes together dissipates and there’s a listlessness to watching them go about their day-to-day. Lucy’s sad about having broken up with her fiance and Margaret’s sad about her sister’s passing - there’s not much to their individual stories and you feel that emptiness tangibly when they’re on their own.
Winterhart is a very skilful artist and the art is of the same high quality in Dear Historian as it was in Driving Short Distances and Days of the Bagnold Summer. This time around he has deployed a new illustration method called monoprinting which gives this book a different visual style to the others - an almost metallic finish to the drawings. And reading about how monoprinting is done in the afterword makes the artwork all the more impressive given how precise you have to be.
Dear Historian isn’t bad and I liked it in parts. The story the characters are in may be underwhelming and somewhat questionable but the main characters are brilliant and make up for those narrative shortcomings. I didn’t love it as much as Driving Short Distances but if you enjoy Joff Winterhart’s comics, there’s definitely enough here to satisfy you.
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