Heath Robinson’s Golf

Heath Robinson (1872–1944) is Britain’s “Gadget King”—master of the art of creating madcap contraptions that made use of ropes, weights, and pulleys to perform relatively simple tasks, from wart removal to peeling potatoes. Although he trained as a painter and also worked as a book illustrator, Robinson developed his forte with drawings of gadgets that parodied the absurdities of modern life. A true cartoonist, Robinson had a way of getting at the heart of the matter while simultaneously satirizing it mercilessly. He became a household name in Britain, and his popularity continues today with plans to build a museum in London to share with a new generation the story of his life and work.

Heath Robinson’s Golf establishes Robinson as one of the great humorists of the “gentleman’s game.” From the origin of those peculiar shortened pants called “plus-fours” to the multiple meanings of an “awkward lie,” Robinson pokes fun at this popular sport. Among the cartoons in Golf are mechanisms like a machine for testing golf drivers or the “waterproof mashie” for keeping one’s clothes dry. And, while Robinson primarily focuses on the antics of a portly golfer and his long-suffering caddie, few will avoid the feeling that Robinson is at times speaking directly to them with contraptions like a putter fitted with a patented ball guide or a “movable bunker” to block an opponent’s progress down the fairway.

A side-splittingly funny collection from the man whose “absurd, beautiful drawings” H. G. Wells claimed “give me a peculiar pleasure of the mind like nothing else in the world,” this book make a perfect gift for anyone looking to have a laugh at our complicated and increasingly mechanical modern life.