He has been honoured by the Dalai Lama, influenced the pop art of Andy Warhol and was praised by Charles de Gaulle as his “only international rival”. He is also a gay icon, considered a patron saint by some journalists, and a hero to successive generations of people across the world.

Tintin the intrepid boy reporter this week comes to London for a free exhibition at Somerset House exploring, among other things, how he became such a global phenomenon. It will also examine the character’s creator, the Belgian illustrator Hergé.

The Tintin expert, Michael Farr, who has worked on the exhibition with the Hergé Foundation, said he hoped it would attract old and new fans.

“It is for the person who first discovers him and goes ‘wow’ but also for the many people who are Tintin connoisseurs. The books are full of adventure. It is really exciting, gripping, page-turning stuff and the humour is everywhere, you really do laugh out loud reading these books.”

The model of Captain Haddock’s fictional home, Marlinspike Hall, which is based on a real-life French chateau. Photograph: Ray Tang/Rex Shutterstock

The exhibition includes three specially created models of Tintin scenes, including the ticker tape reception he receives after thwarting Chicago gangsters in Tintin in America. In the final room is a scale model of Marlinspike Hall, Captain Haddock’s ancestral home, which itself is modelled on Château de Cherverny in the Loire valley.

A spokeswoman for Somerset House said it took four months to make, with the last of 6,000 individual roof tiles glued on last week.

Tintin was created in 1929 when Hergé was working for the children’s supplement of the Belgian newspaper, Le Vingtième Siècle.



“It was an instant success from that very first Thursday,” said Farr. “All the copies were sold out so they doubled the print run. It sold out so they trebled it and it sold out. It ended up the supplement was selling more copies than the newspaper.”

The Tintin expert, Michael Farr, who has helped put the exhibition together. Photograph: Martin Godwin/The Guardian

Tintin’s popularity continued throughout the 1930s, until the Catholic newspaper was closed down by the Nazis in 1940.

Almost immediately he was offered a berth by Le Soir, although paper shortages meant he could not be in a supplement and so was on page 3 along with the sport, stock market, theatre listings and society notices. Le Soir was seen as a collaborationist newspaper, although Hergé was far from being a Nazi sympathiser, said Farr, who knew the illustrator personally.

“The fact was people liked having Tintin in the paper, it cheered people up and it was a great morale booster. It is hard for us to fathom how popular Tintin was.”

It has been said that Tintin is an alter ego of the young Hergé, while Captain Haddock is a version of the old Hergé. Illustration: Hergé Moulinsart 2015

After the war, Tintin became a world superstar with the now canonical series of Tintin albums, which contain stories such as Tintin in Tibet, published in the same year the Dalai Lama fled the country. But Captain Haddock, who first appeared in 1941, is the character who always comes top of popularity surveys, said Farr.

If Tintin was an alter ego of a young Hergé, a fan of scouting and good deeds, then Haddock was an alter ego of an older Hergé who enjoyed drinking and swore too much. Hergé came up with the name when he asked his wife what fish was she was cooking on night. “Aiglefin,” she said, “or that boring fish they call haddock in English”.

Over the years there have been controversies, not least the perceived colonialist racism of books such as Tintin in the Congo. Farr said it had not hindered Africa’s enormous enthusiasm for the books, particularly Tintin in the Congo, “a book we feel reservations about more strongly than they do in Africa. He has a universal, very multicultural appeal”.

Tintin has also been claimed as a gay icon due to his close relationship with Captain Haddock. Farr is not so sure: “Hergé would be delighted to know he had the pink appeal but knowing Hergé a bit, he loved girls too much, he had an eye for every girl, he would have seen that as the logical thing.”

• Tintin: Hergé’s Masterpiece is at Somerset House in London from 12 November to 31 Jaunuary 2016.