While working on the article about Eleanor and Herbert Farjeon's Kings and Queens, I was reminded of Prune's Progress, Anthony Armstrong's book about the genealogical tree of wartime comic-strip hero Pilot-Officer Percy Prune, RAF.
Prune's Progress also has something in common with Sellar and Yeatman's history book parody 1066 and All That.
These little books contain amusing illustrations and witty text. The text greatly enhances and complements the pictures, and vice-versa.
Prune's Progress (1943) consists of a sequence of 28 pictures, each of which depicts a member of the Prune family tree and is accompanied by a short summary of his or her life.
Writer Anthony Armstrong provided the text, and the pictures are the work of cartoonist Raff.
Anthony Armstrong was the retired army captain George Anthony Armstrong Willis (1897-1976), and Raff was the airman William John Henry (Bill) Hooper (1916 – 1996). Affable dimwit and hopeless incompetent Pilot-Officer Percy Prune, with his catchphrase of “Good (or bad) show!”, was their joint creation.
This is the first edition of Prune's Progress:
