And that's not to mention the obsessive effort that must be necessary for Handford himself to construct these human anthills. Each one is like a vast Victorian narrative painting, Frith's Derby Day, but done in the style of Tintin - and with jokes, and infinite patience. James Joyce reputedly said that he wanted people to spend their lives solving the puzzles of Finnegans Wake. I've managed to see Wally in most of the pictures, Wenda and Odlaw in a couple. If I'm going to find Woof's bones, not to mention Wally in the land of the Wallies, I'll need a year's sabbatical and my first pair of reading glasses. Which means it should keep the average 10-year-old busy for the average rainy summer day. That was in 1997. In the time that it has taken Handford to produce the next volume, JK Rowling has published six Harry Potter books. But it doesn't take much scrutiny of The Great Picture Hunt to see why it has taken so long. After a couple of books, Handford's style settled down in all its hard-edge crispness. However, they became exponentially more crowded and intricate. The first book wasn't exactly sparsely populated, but by comparison with the new one it looks like Waiting for Godot.