The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists Paperback – Abridged, 25 September 2020

I read this book 48 years ago. My wife, American, found the original book hard to understand the text and found this book ideal.

The graphics are a beautiful portrayal of characters in the original. Drawn with such love, humour and perception. This graphic novel is a perfect companion to the original.

Should be standard reading for everyone and this is a great way to tell the story of the corruption of capitalism and its effects on the working class.

The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists is quite a forbidding book - it's incredibly beloved, with a deeply loyal following many of whom have had their entire world outlook inexorably shifted by the novel, but it's also quite daunting because of that and how big it is. I wouldn't say I leapt at the chance of reading this adaptation simply because it would translate some of those ideas in a more direct manner, but honestly it didn't hurt. But what the Rickard sisters have achieved is far more than just an adaptation but a work of art in and of itself that can sit proudly next to the original as a book of great power.I first saw their debut, Mann's Best Friend, online and thought some of the landscape in it looked very familiar - it turns out that they set this charming, lovely little book in a fantasy of several northern towns including bits of my home in Todmorden. So I was already somewhat biased towards what they did next but this is such a gargantuan step forward it really gives hope for chumps like me still trying to coalesce their own personal style. Because it really does take the humanity and intimacy of the debut and use it as a way into what must be a really difficult book to break down. That's mostly because a great deal of it is mainly dialogue and the expression of big ideas from character to character. Now it must be incredibly easy for this sort of thing to become unbearably didactic and preachy, but the Rickards know better than this and know that the book will be too much if it doesn't really nail the characters, which it absolutely does.There are echoes in the art of a range of socialist artists and posters, especially of the kind that is held at the People's History Museum in Manchester, yet it never feels unduly owing too much to any of these reference points. And the art is at its best when it happily wheels through genres (the lectures of Barrington) and time (there's a beautifully subtle appearance at the inquest of a particularly awful politician at his historically worst), whilst also happily allowing these to be secondary to the narrative. There's a lovely physicality to all the characters which also means the dialogue stretches - of which there are many - are not too gloopy because the characters are always in motion in some way.I think the real testament to the power of the book is trying to work out what the right wing version of this would be? And I don't mean in terms of blatant fascism, but what kind of book someone could read and overpoweringly feel that their politics lay to the right of the spectrum. The nearest I could think of is Ayn Rand, and apart from the witty and erudite work of Daryl Cunningham which is more a commentary on the worst instincts of this kind of writer, I think any adaptation would basically be lacking entirely any sense of humanity. Look at Steve Ditko's mad libertarian/ objectivist stuff with Mr A: it reads like an absurd take on a Jack Chick tract because it is hectoring and angry and lacking in any actual understanding of humanity, just like Chick and Rand themselves.And that's where this book really strikes you already as a classic: because it's all about humanity and people and their needs and wants and desires. Even when Tressell is rightly angry and sometimes lapses into more blatant anger (Dr Weakling, Mr Crass, Mr Slyme - although it's interesting that these are all the middle men, not the actual fat cats, that he's most furious at), he and the Rickards never lose sight of the humanity of the people. Owen and Barrington could so easily be wish fulfilment characters, angry at the system and brilliantly articulate, but they're both very pointedly shown as vulnerable and human. For me the real beating heart of the book is Mr Philpot, who despite having lost his family, is shown as the real emotional centre of all the workers and whose ultimate fate is so awful because of this.The book doesn't so much end as pause. There are endings, but not An Ending because there is never an ending for this story while a hundred years after Tressell having written it the powers that rule us treat the workers with contempt. The parallels between the world then and the world now are stark and obvious but don't need to be signposted because they're so bloody ingrained in every part of our society. There's a throwaway moment where a Tory politician promises an end to struggle by "the end of the century" and one of the crowd says "I've been waiting all my life for better conditions so a few more years won't make much difference" and it makes you so angry and sad because this really is still what we're being promised. Austerity is exactly the crap the Mugsborough Corporation pull on their workers. Nothing has changed and that's desperately sad. But one day, if enough people are moved like the Rickards have been by Tressell's story we can finally do something about that. A truly great book

As a social historical piece it does rather well, the read takes one into the gritty working class world of the early 20th century. It's the characters and plots that I found interesting, it still exist today with the same mindset. It is a bit repetitive though however I give some leeway to the author as he was very ill when he wrote this, his illness creeps through in the writing. It's worth a read and in many ways enlightening as an early 20th century narrative of that period.