Colonel Blimp

By Linda Haywood • October 27, 2008

In the 1930’s, David Low drew Colonel Blimp cartoons for the Evening Standard. The Topical Budget, a weekly comic commentary ran for almost six years, from April 21st, 1934 to March 16th, 1940. One morning, Low read a Colonel’s letter to the newspapers, protesting the mechanisation of the cavalry and insisting they must wear spurs in their tanks. He was inspired to create a new cartoon character.

Blimp, the plump, choleric, walrus-moustached, towel-clad habitué of a West End Turkish bath replaced John Bull, Britannia and the Lion as the epitome of Britain. Low said that Blimp typified ‘the current disposition to mixed-up thinking, to having it both ways, to dogmatic doubleness, to paradox and plain self-contradiction.’

Low strongly protested when Sir Arthur Bryant published ‘In defence of Blimp’ in The New York Herald Tribune in 1951. He wrote an explanation of Blimp’s philosophical origins:

Colonel Blimp was created in the thirties to symbolise the stupidity and confusion then prevalent in ruling political circles concerning the threat of Hitler. It was directed particularly against those who thought it wise to ditch the League of Nations and Collective Security and make a private deal with Nazi Germany. Ever since then those who backed the wrong horse have been trying to distort his meaning into some.

Colonel Blimp Cartoon

Blimp’s influence was noted in the House of Commons. ‘It is a complete misrepresentation and a mistake to suppose that I am associated with a number of respectable, shall I say, Colonel Blimps,’ huffed the Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence, Sir Thomas Inskip, in February 1937.

In 1942 Emeric Pressburger and Michael Powell filmed, ‘The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp’. Churchill was not amused and demanded it be stopped. You can see a scene from it above.

Blimp’s world view captured the well-meaning patriotism and reactionary muddle-headedness of so many public figures in the twenty years between the wars. George Orwell and Tom Wintringham made especially extensive use of the term “blimps”, Orwell in his articles and Wintringham in his book “How to Reform the Army and People’s War”. Bathroom tiles and ashtrays with Blimp in action were popular in the 40’s.