ANNUALS FOR THE AGES

THE BEANO, BUNTY… AND EVERYTHING IN BETWEEN, FINDING A CHRISTMAS ANNUAL UNDER THE TREE IS ALWAYS A GLEEFUL MOMENT, SAYS IONA BOWER Everyone has a personal Christmas must-have. It might be a box of dates or a new jigsaw. Mine is the pleasingly solid feel of a wrapped annual. Novels are lovely, too, but if you've not sat down with a weighty annual in your lap, then have you really even had a Christmas? The annual is two centuries old this year. The first 'literary annual' was The Forget-Me-Not, which contained poems, short stories and illustrations to amuse 19th-century ladies. But they really took off in the inter-war period, after silent cartoons became popular and there was a market for books featuring Mickey Mouse and other favourites of the newly cinema-going children…

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The Simple Things (Digital) - 1 Issue, December 2023

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