Skegness is still SO bracing!
UTTER the word ‘Skegness’ and many people will find it hard to resist interjecting, ‘is SO bracing’. It’s one of the most well-known slogans from one of the most famous travel posters of all time. In May 1908, when the artist John Hassall recorded the receipt of 12 guineas in his ledger for a design of a ‘Fisherman dancing’, he can’t have predicted that this particular commission, one of thousands carried out in his lifetime, would become his visual epitaph, nor that, more than 110 years later, his poster would still be an inspiring template for today’s cartoonists and illustrators.
The Jolly Fisherman, prancing with balletic grace across the sand, his round belly inflated with invigorating sea air and his arms outstretched in carefree abandon, has become synonymous not only with the Lincolnshire seaside resort, but with a cheery, stoic brand of Britishness—a tendency to make the best of things in a country at the
