A foundational environmentalist text centuries ahead of its time, The Compleat Angler is one of the most reprinted books in the English language.

From the ruins of the English Civil War to the challenges we all face today, Gareth Brookes’ highly original multimedia adaptation of Izaak Walton’s classic focuses on its instructional aspects, highlights its eccentricities and contemplative themes of nature and friendship, and draws parallels between today’s politically divided and ecologically endangered England and that of the 17th century.

Following Brookes’ similarly ambitious The Dancing Plague, this adaptation is lovingly rendered in both linocut engraving and hand-drawn pen-and-ink to contrast the meditative and the instructional in Walton’s writing. As a guidebook on how to fish, this 350-year-old manual makes the perfect gift for any angling enthusiast, and its reflective writing connects with post-pandemic desires for calm, mindful pursuits and a return to nature.

The Compleat Angler is a delight, an absolute delight.

* The Slings and Arrows *

Almost a philosophical manual of R & R.

* Peter Morey *

Brookes’ art in this graphic adaptation seems to be perfectly adapted to his subject matter, existing as an item of beauty in its own right.

* Bookmunch *

The Compleat Angler is, truly, a gorgeous object. It's no exaggeration to say that, barring the publisher's details on its dust jacket, every single page of this book would sit handsomely on a gallery wall. But it's also a seductive treatise on reflection - a call, one might say, to inaction, from a slower, more contented past.

* The Irish Times *

It captures Walton’s warm and holistic approach to angling, rivers and waterlife. Walton opens a window on a long-lost England, a world yet to be blighted by industrial capitalism, a natural environment whose beneficence is exploited by those who live off the land to fill supper plates.

* WestminsterExtra *

The Compleat Angler sets linocut prints and inky drawings alongside Walton’s poetic prose, conjuring a landscape of cruelty and plenty in a meditative book of subtle carp, malicious frogs and dainty eels.

* The Guardian *

As a work of art, the comic is stunning... a calming salve in turbulent political times.

* International Journal of Comic Art Blog *

Gareth Brookes studied printmaking at the Royal College of Art. His graphic novels include A Thousand Coloured Castles (2017) and The Black Project, which was nominated for an award at the Angoulême International Comics Festival, 2018. His work has appeared in ArtReview, been published by Kuš, and was included in the “Comics Unmasked” exhibition at the British Library in 2014. His last graphic novel, The Dancing Plague (SelfMadeHero, 2021) was hailed by The New York Times as “Visually stunning”: “With fire and needle, Brookes crafts a book the likes of which we’ve never seen before.”

Izaak Walton (1593–1683) was an English writer, best remembered today as the author of The Compleat Angler (1653). He also wrote a number of short Lives, including the first biographies of the poets George Herbert and John Donne.