I bought this book for my late Father some twenty years ago. I come from a family of anglers and Bernard Venables was an integral part of my childhood and most especially his wonderful Mr Crabtree Goes Fishing articles for the Daily Mirror. These cartoon scripts featured Mr Crabtree (name penned by none other than Jack Hargreaves) and his son Peter who was based on Venables’ own son. These were charming tutorials published in the 1940s and eventually turned into multi-million selling books.

The Illustrated Memoirs of a Fisherman is a wonderful collection of stories and paintings from the golden age of angling. He was fishing friends with the great Richard ‘Dick’ Walker, the hotelier Charles Ritz, the actor Terry Thomas and modern-day legends Chris Yates and Bob James. This really is a book about boyhood wonder and discovery, Venables was born in 1907 and began fishing at the age of six in Romney Marsh, Kent. He worked as an artist and writer for many years and travelled the world as an angling consultant for BOAC.

Venables produced beautiful paintings and captivating illustrations. Mr Crabtree with pipe in the side of his month reeling in a big pike was exciting stuff in its day and his paintings capture a gentler pace of life with hidden pools or calm streams and rivers, overhanging trees and blue skies.

This book recalls a fascinating life. In 1959, he travelled alone to Madeira and caught a colossal 1700lb shark. Seven years later in 1966, during a trip at the invitation of the Zambian government to consult on the development of their tourism, he trekked to the source of the great Zambezi, and would later write about it in his book Coming Down the Zambezi (Constable Books 1974)

Between 1961 and 1962 Venables wrote four books in the Mr Cherry and Jim series published by The Angling Times. One each dedicated to catching roach, pike, trout and perch. This carried on where Mr Crabtree left off, Jim, the young boy eager to learn at the feet of Mr Cherry, gently guiding the reader on tips learned over a lifetime of angling.

I love this book, the author was a gentle man, angler, artist and naturalist who sadly had little money towards the end of his life but his was a life very well lived. I would recommend this book to anyone, it’s more than an angling memoir and it’s a reminder of the beauty of living a gentle life.

Bernard Venables 1907-2001