The fourteenth 'Asterix' album may well have been the first that I read as a kid, so it's stayed in mind for forty years as an impression of what I expect from the series. There aren't that many new characters and many of them are Spanish, so I didn't get the jokes back then, but there are plenty of regular puns here to make up for that. The few that are here, however, have glorious names, not least Spurius Brontosaurus and Raucus Hallelujachorus.

The core conceit is that, just as there's one little village in Gaul that's stood up to the Romans, there's also one little village in Hispania that's done exactly the same thing, merely without a magic potion to make it trivial. Its chief is Huevos y Bacon and his frustrating young son is Pepe, who's confident enough to ping Julius Caesar himself on the back of the head with a rock from his sling. However, he's also small enough that two Romans can capture him. Caesar keeps him as a hostage, thus ensuring that Huevos y Bacon's little village will behave itself.

Albert Uderzo draws the Iberians as a proud and steadfast race, meaning that they get better treatment than pretty much any other non-Gaulish race in the series thus far. However, when the Romans depart with Pepe, he falls onto one knee and mutters, "My only consolation is that they'll have their work cut out with that boy." He isn't kidding. Those two Romans who grabbed him, for instance, are walking collections of bite marks at this point and they haven't had him for long. Caesar also worries that Huevos y Bacon will find a way to steal him back, so he comes up with the plan of sending him far away to the north, such as to one of those Gaulish garrisons for safekeeping. No prizes for guessing who he bumps into during a game of hide and seek!

Of course, even though out favourite Gaulish village is keeping him safe from the Romans, not keeping him hostage or prisoner, he's still a complete handful and he serves as a particularly bad influence on Obelix, who's even more of a child at heart in this book than usual. That's not helped by the fact that Vitalstatistix puts Pepe into Obelix's care. My most abiding memory of this book is Pepe persuading adults to let him have his way by holding his breath long enough that they give in, followed quickly by Obelix adopting exactly the same approach.

Now, you might expect that much of the book will be spent with the Romans trying to get Pepe back and the Gauls taking them down and beating them up at every attempt, but that's not the case, for one impeccably good reason: Spurius Brontosaurus realises that they don't have to. If the job they were given was specifically to keep hold of Pepe, at which they've failed miserably, the reason behind it was to keep him a long way from his father. And, with the "little monster" or "holy terror" in the care of the Gauls, he's precisely that with the bonus that they will be the ones getting bitten.

So we settle into a slapstick interlude. The very first panel of the book is set outside the shop of the village's fishmonger, Unhygienix, with Asterix suggesting to Obelix that they try some fish for a change, and this becomes a running joke. The first time Pepe tries his holding his breath trick in front of the Gauls is when he decides that he wants fish instead of boar. That prompts Obelix to go to Unhygienix to buy one, without any money, only to find when he returns home that Pepe has decided he likes boar after all and so much that he ate Obelix's too. Our rotund friend actually attempts to return that fish, which leads to a mass brawl that encompasses the entire village.

As interludes go, it's glorious fun, but it doesn't shift us to the next phase of the story. That's a different trigger and it's one that long term fans of the series may be able to guess. Pepe, with his exotic Hispanian ways, likes the singing of the bard Cacofonix, unlike absolutely everybody else in the village. I mean, sure, it reminds him of the goats back home, but the result remains the same.

The more he has the bard sing lullabies to him, the more the villagers want the little kid gone and the sooner they figure out that the best way to do that is for Asterix and Obelix to return him to his family. And, given that Unhygienix owns a fishing boat and he's just inherited some property in Britain so could do with some menhirs, we have a way forward and an explanation for Stonehenge in one swell foop.

We're only halfway at this point but you can probably imagine much of the rest yourself, albeit with plenty of touches that you might not.

For instance, you won't be surprised that our heroes soon encounter the inevitable pirates, but you're less likely to expect them to leave them afloat, merely sans a supply of wild boar with a rather prescient joke about grocery stores with self-service. After all, this book was published in 1969 and translated into English in 1971. That feels like it's a 21st century gag.

You won't be surprised to find that they encounter a bunch of locals after they land in Hispania, but you may not expect one prominent bunch of them to turn out to be Gauls heading south on holiday, even though the prices are rising so much it's Spainful. And you may not expect, given that puns, so happily the focus of so much of the series's humour, are typically described as the lowest form of wit, that René Goscinny throws in a highbrow joke like an encounter with Sancho Panza and Don Quixote, albeit one interrupted by mention of a local landmark. "¿Windmills? ¡Charge!"

I appreciated the fact that the pub they stay one night at is called Basque Inn, but that's likely a credit for the English translators rather than Goscinny. I wonder what the equivalent name was in the original French editions. It's at the Repleat Tourist that they're noticed by Spurius Brontosaurus, who's returned to Hispania, and we get to where we expected to be all along. It has to be here, because every other town at which they stop is closed for a public holiday, with everyone busy with an identical druidical procession. That's clearly social comment wrapped up in a joke but I have no idea what it's commenting on.

Everything here plays well and feels fresh, from Obelix learning how to dance flamenco with a band of nomads to the masterful situation comedy that results from our heroes conducting a part of their journey by cart—rented, I should add, from Nodepositon el Sodasiphon—on rough Hispanian roads. Spurius Brontosaurus ends up rescuing them and giving them a lift, under the fake name of Oloroso el Fiasco. Even the finalé works, with Asterix and Spurius being thrown to the lions in the Circus of Hispalis. Well, they don't have lions there, so they have to face a wild aurochs and they have no magic potion, so Asterix proceeds to invent bullfighting.

This whole series is potent nostalgia for me, even if I haven't read every instalment before, but this particular entry brought back wonderful memories. I don't know how many times I read my copy, but it's beaten up enough that it must have been a lot. Pepe is a lot of fun, as much as I'm happy I don't have to look after the holy terror. The puns are solid—"Keep your hair on," Caesar tells Huevos y Bacon, "or you'll soon be heirless." Even Dogmatix gets something to do, saving Pepe from being kidnapped by Spurius Brontosaurus. It's a riot to the traditional final panel of a celebratory banquet, this time enhanced by Obelix dancing flamenco.

Next month, from a nostalgic favourite to a book I may not have read before. Let's find out as I dive into 'Asterix and the Roman Agent'. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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