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5th February

Surrounded by this winters first snow fall I’m trying to warm up after filling the bird feeders. It’s almost impossible to imagine how trench life must have been in weather like this! Today’s books all come from David Pritchards fine collection. Each of the books can be had on the net but only the Bairnsfather anthology seems to be obtainable in a jacket. (the UK edition of the Tank Corps is available jacketed from Peter Harringtons).

1st February

Back from a long weekend in Bath. Such an elegant city but now deprived of most of its second-hand bookshops - I could find only 2 remaining of the dozen or so that I found some 30 years ago. A fine batch of jackets from David & Helen Pritchard awaited me on my return which I shall filter in gradually. That for Hody’s ‘With the Mad 17th to Italy’ leaves me most envious - it’s a rare enough book without said jacket. ‘A Kiss from France’ is one of those morale boosting collections of short stories published during the War here sporting a typically naive jacket from Helen McKie. There’s an archive of her material at the V & A - it seems she produced a lot of pictures throughout the 2nd War as well including a number of drawings of the Nazi hierarchy. John Marrin has a copy if you’re interested.

28th January

A Scottish Nurse from Bodley Head’s ‘On Active Service Series’ was on-site before but with an image overstamped with a dealers logo so I’ve purchased it to improve its appearance! A most unusual pictorial jacket from Faber for Plivier’s follow up to ‘The Kaiser’s Coolies’ detailing the collapse of Germany towards the end of the War, Lionel Dawson shows how we take time out in war-time to shoot a few animals as well as ourselves & the US edition of Velona Pilchers play.

25th January

Downton Abbey, War Horse & now Birdsong - The Great War is moving inexorably back to centre stage as the first Centenary approaches. Apparently in the US there is now an ever increasing appetite for books set during the period so by 2014 even those of us already steeped in the War may start to become a little jaded. No evidence yet that today’s revisionist historians have had any effect on the public perception of the War. I suspect it’s going to be mud, blood & futility all the way.

The first 2 books today have been shamelessly lifted from the excellent new Turner Donovan website so apologies to those of you who may now own these volumes. The Arch Whitehouse is a collection of short flying stories some of which are War based & Sir Alfred Ewing ran the Naval decryption operations which deciphered the Zimmerman telegram that helped bring America into the War .

21st January

At last Tom Donovan is launching his new website - Turner Donovan Military Books. If you wish to type in the new address then it’s -http://www.tdbooks.co.uk/index.The new site has plenty of images of Books for Sale & a greatly enhanced search facility. It should go live late this Sunday evening or Monday morning.A preliminary look shows a much improved facility.

The most welcome image today is that by Fred Leist for the Boyd Cable re-issue which goes to complete a trio of similar works. Thanks to Andrew Harrison for spotting this on a New Zealand book site.

17th January

Not the most interesting of selections but I’m running low on images as a few books are still mid-atlantic (hopefully). The US 1st of the Boyd Cable (culled from E-Bay) is only of interest in that the front & rear of the jacket are identical - not Duttons finest moment. The upper 2 are from Babylon Revisited - Contraband is a novel about Blockade running & the Barbusse is a series of short stories, some set in the War & others in the Balkans & Russia (published in the UK as ‘Thus & Thus’ & in France as ‘Faits Divers’) .

13th January

I usually find that personal reminiscences by the clergy can be rather unenlightening but not so Rev. Creighton’s account of the Gallipoli landings with the 29th Division. Always in the thick of the action & with a wealth of fine images this is well worth seeking out & quite easy to find sans jacket (I have a spare if anyone wants it). The Ward Price is a War Correspondents view but useful nonetheless & with good pics..

9th January

I thought I’d update my Buchan listings replacing my later 39 Steps (price 2/- on front) with the first below & also with what I think is a first of the rarer Greenmantle (it comes from the site of some firm who make money selling images, hence the overstamping, so apologies to them). It prompted me to re-read The 39 Steps & frankly it’s a pretty awful book - anti-semitic & extremely right-wing, it lacks all the things that have made the films so exiting - no Mr. Memory, villain with missing finger top, girls, wether hand-cuffed too or otherwise & the steps merely a route to the sea from a holiday villa (why would you count them anyway?). I remember reading Greenmantle many years ago and finding that fairly dire as well! The Burrage is merely to show that the US edition is the same as that from the UK.

5th January 2012

Back from France & a Happy New Year to both my readers! A big thank you is due to Bob Liska of the Colophon Bookshop for this excellent quartet of Flying books which he sent in late last year. This is definitely the first place to look for WW1 Flying memoirs. James McCudden’s memoir of the RFC is particularly welcome as this may be the only remaining copy in its original rather flimsy jacket. Also Col. Tennants memoir of his time whilst CO of the RFC in Mesopotamia, although fairly easy to find is almost unknown in its jacket. An Airman’s Wife is a true story composed of a series of poignant letters between the wife & her husband in the RFC.

28th December

3 US editions to finish off the year. Pliver’s ‘Kaiser’s Coolies’ tells of the growing unrest below decks on one of the German High Seas Fleet ships which would eventually lead to revolution (His other War novel, ‘The Kaiser Goes, the Generals Remain’ is making its slow way to me from Canada). A very Deco sleeve for the US edition of Fokkers biography & a War play from 1915 which would be made into a film the following year starring Nazimova & Richard Barthelmess.

24th December

Just one image today as we wind down to Christmas. A booklet of cartoons from 1915 to accompany a list of pre-war German promises which they proceeded to break. The artist is uncredited unfortunately other than by the monogram ‘GRH’ which is a pity as they are quite good. Strangely the publisher listed on the cover, Dawson, differs from that given inside, Dobson.

Merry Christmas to anyone still reading this.

20th December

I was so pleased to unearth this rare survivor that it deserves to be today’s sole entry. It’s one of a series of 7 books published by Heinemann in 1915-1916 called ‘Soldiers Tales of the Great War’. It’s a well-written account by Capt. Arnold Gyde (‘Casualty’) of the advance to Mons & the susequent crossing of the Marne & the Aisne. The only other example from the series on the site is Subins’ ‘Uncensored Letters from the Dardanelles’ on p.28. Any pictures of the other 5 volumes would be much appreciated. They are ‘With My Regiment’ by Platoon Commander, ‘Dixmude’ by Le Goffic, ‘In the Field’, ‘Prisoner of War’ by Warnod & ‘On the Anzac Trail’ by Anzac.

16th December

As the winter winds have whipped the seas around here into a frenzy I thought it might be appropriate to show some new Naval books. ‘Blue Peter’ is described as a romance of the Great War but I can find no further information on it. Count Luckner was a larger-than-life character who converted his schooner into a raider to sink Allied shipping. Klaxon’s War Poetry can be had for quite a price from First Place Books & a later imp of Charles Edmonds memoir completes the quartette.

12th December

It’s always nice of a morning to get those little e-mails from ABE saying ‘We’ve found the book you’re looking for’ usually followed by the inevitable disappointment caused by the dealer having ticked the d.w. box when the book doesn’t have one. More often these days it’s because the book is wildly overpriced. 3 popped up yesterday which make me think we’re not living in a recession after all or maybe those fat-cat bankers have found something else to spend their bonuses on - Broger’s ‘Pillbox 17’ at £895, Hay’s ‘First 100,000’ at £950 & most alarmingly Lushington’s ‘Gambardier’ at £1750 !! The nice little volume on Human Courage below cost me just £8 but I’m prepared to accept offers in excess of £1,000 for it.

8th December

Sorry if today’s batch looks a little too sentimental but it’s remarkable how many books on animals in War have been published, at least in America. Given that an estimated 8 million horses & mules were killed let alone countless dogs, pigeons etc. then I think they deserve their place amongst the rest of the casualties.

Yesterday I was in Cecil Court, that long established street of antiquarian bookshops in London. Sadly it seems to be going the way of all high streets these days. 2 more of the shops have gone to be replaced with non-book outlets. The adjacent Charing Cross Road was heaving with tourists but hardly any had turned into the Court. Maybe a little local advertising would save it from what looks like a terminal decline.

4th December

Today’s first book is another Escapee memoir. I would think that of all War memoirs these must have been amongst the most popular. Checking the shelves here at Dust Jacket HQ I find that most Trench memoirs were lucky to see a second printing whereas many of the P.O.W. Memoirs often went into 7 or 8 impressions. I suppose they were just more uplifting ; the reason why ‘The Great Escape’ is still our most popular film. Maybe I should gather them all together in a page of their own.

30th November

Inspired by Fons sending in ‘The Box with Broken Seals’ I’ve gathered together a few other novels by E. Phillips Oppenheim. An English Writer who produced over 100 novels he was credited with inventing the Spy thriller. During the War he worked for the Ministry of Information & produced many novels with a wartime theme. These are the only ones I can find in their jackets.

26th November

A big thank you to Fons Oltheten for providing a timely & seasonal batch of images to take us towards Christmas (yes I know it’s far too early but we’ve already had over a month of Christmas ads on TV). Riggs ‘With Three Armies’ mentioned last time has arrived & is worth searching out for the series of fine photographs that illustrate it. Also a copy of Mother-Country Fatherland which increases my stock of German memoirs - maybe I should group them together on a page of their own.

22nd November 2011

The first of today’s offerings isn’t with me yet being somewhere over the Atlantic. It’s a standard journalists account of the War but I couldn’t resist the jacket image with the dog. The next 2 are somewhat peripheral to the War but are worth inclusion. The first relates the attempted expansion of French & Spanish empires into Morocco during the War & the second the fate of Austro-Hungarian prisoners in Revolutionary Russia. The last is the US edition of C. E. Montague’s posthumous short stories.

18th November

A nice group today headed by a seemingly unrecorded novel of life in an air station on the Cornish coast during the War. The author had a distinguished War record with the RNAS where he chased Zeppelins & bombed submarines. Yet another of the seemingly endless but obviously highly popular series of Naval stories produced in the War years, these ones by Taffrail (Henry Dorling). Plus an appeal to the mothers of America from Mary Rinehart and a history of the Special London Constabulary during the War. The books from Peter Harrington mentioned below form part of a Great War catalogue they’ve produced - see here.

14th November

I thought it might be appropriate to follow Armistice Day with a selection of charitable Gift books. Several of these were published during the War to raise funds for various good causes & were clearly very successful judging by the numbers surviving today. They were extremely good value retailing at 2/6 or 3/- (a new Novel would have been 6/-), lavishly produced & with mostly original material by the leading Authors & Artists of the day. The Tenedos Times, a reprint of a Naval magazine, published for the Soldiers & Sailors Families Fund is the exact opposite however being a completely amateur undertaking & retailing at an alarming 21/-. For those of you with deep pockets, Peter Harrington’s have just listed some very desirable jacketed WW1 titles - Liaison 1914, Liveing’s ‘Attack’, Mahon’s ‘Cold Feet’, Dearden’s ‘Medicine & Duty’, Ratcliffe’s ‘Idle Warriors’ & Swinton’s ‘Eyewitness’ amongst others.

11/11/11

Remembering.

9th November

A little group of Pictorial bindings today. The delightful Dorothy VAD & the Doctor is a fairly run-of-the-mill front line romance from 1918 but is of interest for its superb cover drawing by Joyce Dennys. Whilst I managed to buy it quite cheaply from Ebay, the Edgar Wallace, which I briefly considered, flew away at £255. I didn’t know he was still collected. The 2 children’s books were just chanced upon whilst browsing. I’ve had a response to my Books Wanted page for only the second time since putting it up - Hugh Kingsmill’s fine POW memoir ‘Behind Both Lines’ should be winging its way across the pond - it has one of my favourite jackets.

5th November

I was hoping that yesterdays visit to the Chelsea Bookfair would have provided some fireworks for today’s batch of books but, as usual, I was to be disappointed. Somehow the fair has lost its edge over the last few years - the opening day scrum was certainly much thinner this time. Not so many modern first dealers to brighten things up & John Marrin has held his wares back until Deepcut next weekend but with only 12 dealers listed for that I don’t have much expectation for there either. I’m trying to gather together a collection of fund-raising Gift Books for next time.

31st October

A motley collection of oddities today. The main picture comes from a recent ABE purchase & is just a collection of relief maps of the fighting areas published by the Daily Mail in 1916. It’s remarkable how much better these maps are at conveying the topography of the battlefields than the usual 2-D counterparts. It’s in remarkably good condition & will go on the Pictorial Bindings page. Maybe I’ll scan all 20 in one day and give them a page of their own. Also a rare Canadian memoir & one from New Zealand which I can’t find in any libraries, all I know is it was privately printed at some time..

27th October

2 rather fine volumes awaiting me on my return from France. One on site already, Hutchison’s ‘Warrior’, & the one illustrated below, Henry Bordeaux’ biography of the French Air Ace, Georges-Marie-Ludovic-Jules Guynemer, who disappeared in September 1917. This UK edition has a preface by Kipling - the US edition has Teddy Roosevelt instead. I don’t usually include Modern Library editions but I have a special affection for cumming’s ‘Enormous Room’ as the prison depicted was only a few miles from my French house in La Ferte Masse (I suspect it may have given way to one of the many Supermarche that now occupy large parts of the town).

18th October

It’s always satisfying to unearth what seems to be a previously unrecorded War memoir. Percy Brown records a life of more than usual interest - in San Francisco after the earthquake followed by several years as a professional roller skater. But the bulk of the book concerns his time as one of the first War photographers, becoming close friends with Philip Gibbs, subsequent capture & internment at Ruhleben & finally passage on a German ship to witness the scuttling of the fleet at Scapa Flow. He also seems to have been on friendly terms with the aristocracy judging by the letter enclosed in this copy. The doggy book comes, as you may have guessed, from Fons Oltheten.

13th October

Ebay comes good at last for one of our contributors by way of Admiral von Reuter’s view of the scuttling of the German Fleet at Scapa Flow. Hurst & Blackett seem to have specialised in publishing late masterpieces on the War, mostly coming at the end of the 30s & so guaranteeing their scarcity for collectors. I’d previously overlooked the Tomlinson, which I’ve now ordered, but Fons has pointed out to me that it contains some descriptions of the authors War service. And finally a couple more Unit histories.

9th October 2011

All of today’s pictures come from our diligent collector in the Netherlands, Fons Oltheten. Many Thanks. For myself only jacketless books have come my way - Oliver Hogue’s ‘Cameliers’, Sueter’s ‘Evolution of the Tank’ & that scarcest of Official History sets ‘Transportation on the Western Front’. Only 12 volumes to go but past experience tells me it’s probably best not to complete a set. Many years ago, before book-buying on the Net, I was determined to collect all 83 volumes of the ‘Notable British Trials’ series - it became a towering obsession. Having got them all I rarely give them a second glance now, or only to notice how much shelf space they take up!

5th October

For some time I’ve considered setting up some new pages devoted to Unit histories - Regiments, Divisions etc. I’ve held a few images back with that aim in mind but I don’t seem to be accumulating them fast enough - particularly as they are not things I personally collect. Given that there are probably at least 70 Divisional histories I doubt that I’ve found more than half-a-dozen so a separate page is looking unlikely, hence today’s less than colourful selection. I’ll filter a few more in over the coming weeks. They may all get pulled together at a later date.

1st October

The major purchase for me this week is already on site - Hanbury-Sparrow’s ‘Land-Locked Lake’ - the only copy I’ve seen to buy since I passed up a Charlotte Robinson copy for £100 some 25 years ago - it really is a masterpiece. Speaking of which I see that Peter Harrington has another copy of Junger’s ‘Storm of Steel’ on site at the same price as their last one - this perhaps in even finer condition. I often moan about their high prices but this is undoubtedly scarce & one of the War’s great classics. It certainly represents better value than some of the mediocre detective stories from the thirties which command similar prices around the world. A surprisingly interesting view of life near the Front is given in George Henderson’s ‘Experiences of a Hut leader’. A book previously unknown to me it tells of the work of the YMCA but with good descriptions of Casualty Clearing Stations & various training exercises.

27th September

Back at the coal-face after a couple of weeks exploring the Chateau of the Loire. The upper 2 books were awaiting me on my return - both typical examples of what people at home were reading in vast quantities during the War. The first is purportedly the dairy of a Belgian Nun telling of her experiences under the Germans, the second tells of a lady doctor who joins the RAMC disguised as a man. The other 2 are pictorial bindings and will be placed on their respective pages.

13th September

All today’s additions are taken from Babylon Revisited Rare Books in East Woodstock, CT, USA. I can’t recommend this seller too highly as their catalogues invariably display the best selection of vintage dust jackets on the web. There are usually several WW1 titles scattered around although generally they tend to be the US editions. There’s a nice copy of the UK edition of Rhodes ‘Mademoiselle from Armentieres’ there at the moment.Today I got a copy of Captain Browne’s excellent book ‘The Tank in Action’ Blackwood 1920 - does anyone have a jacketed copy? A picture would be much appreciated.

9th September

Today’s lead book is only of interest for it’s rather engaging cover showing a nurse emoting over a crashed plane. Its slight story of a young girl whose previous suitors have all come to grief finding love at the front can only have been published to cash in on the War book boom. It seems to have vanished without trace. The Graves is on-site already in wrappers but this is the 1920 issue in hardback in its jacket. And Colonel Jelf’s stories recall his time in the Boer & Great Wars.

5th September

Another excellent catalogue today from Turner Donovan although even getting up at 7.15 failed to secure me the book I wanted! Some particularly rare Tank memoirs in there. I see the new series of Downton Abbey will feature the Great War which will doubtless cause a brief flurry of interest in the conflict - I can see ‘Birdsong’ returning to the bestseller lists. It’s a reasonable pastiche but hardly a patch on the book below - the US edition of Frederick Manning’s novel ‘Her Privates We’ - probably the greatest Great War book. It’s good to finally see Fabian Ware on the site, courtesy of Andrew Harrison. Ware’s role in the formation of the War cemeteries can’t be over stated. The memoirs of the US Secretary of State, Robert Lansing, are on their way to me so I can’t comment on it as yet.

1st September

A most unlikely addition in the form of this early copy of Erskine Childers ‘Riddle of the Sands’ from Adrian Harrington Rare Books. Although first published some 11 years before the War, its plot, concerning the discovery of German invasion plans, so closely prefigures coming events that it can be seen as the precursor of much of the War literature to follow. It is said that the naval base at Scapa Flow was built as a result of fears engendered by this novel. The original was published in 1903 but this is the earliest (1916) copy I’ve seen in a jacket. I’ve also added another line of spine-on books to the front page to cover some of my more recent additions.

28th August

Nothing too exciting today. A couple of US editions & a Captain’s memoir. Ian Hay’s guide to the Scottish National War Memorial came from what is probably the only full time second-hand bookshop dealing solely in Military books that we have left - The Military Parade Bookshop in Marlborough. This little shop is always worth dropping into if you’re passing that way, the problem being the owners erratic time-keeping. A faded sign on the door suggests 10.30 - 1.00 & 2 - 5. Many years experience tells me that calling in before 12 in the morning or 3 in the afternoon is futile. The friendly owner specialises in WW2 but there are enough WW1 scattered around to make it worth the detour.

23rd August

Further to the last entry I see that the same dealer below has Junger’s ‘Copse 125’ in a jacket for £500. That makes no sense to me as it’s an equally important book but far scarcer than its predecessor. Ah the vagaries of book pricing. Today's books come courtesy of Andrew Harrison in New Zealand who has braved some truly horrendous weather to find them. I thought snow like that was the preserve of we in the northern latitudes.

19th August

I see that only three short months after fetching just over £1000 at the Bloomsbury auction, Junger’s ‘Storm of Steel’ has been sold on by the London dealer who bought it for £2250. Does this mean that it & similar War memoirs are going to become ‘Trophy’ books sought out by rich collectors of 20th century highlights. Whilst being a fine memoir there are several other German accounts on a par with it - Bloem’s ‘Advance from Mons’, Bucher’s ‘In the Line’, Renn’s ‘War’, Binding’s ‘A Fatalist at War’ etc. & it’s certainly not as scarce as that price suggests. Book prices at that level won’t do any of us any favours. Also let me recommend a fine new biography of Edward Thomas, ‘Now All Roads Lead To France’ by Matthew Hollis. He’s still my favourite War poet but, God, he must have been a hard man to live with!

14th August 2011

I’ve just put up another 15 ft. of shelving to accommodate my Naval & Air War books. The simultaneous purchase of the Bartimeus from Ebay, shown below, made me reflect on the very different way in which the War in these two services has been recorded. The Air War, like the ground based campaigns, has largely been recorded by individual combatants of all ranks, whereas the Naval War, apart from the odd Commanders account, is largely recorded by serial writers of Sea stories such as Keble Chatterton, Taffrail, Bartimeus, Klaxon etc. Are there any first-hand accounts written by ordinary sailors? I’d be interested to hear of any you might know of. The alternative jacket to Eric Roberts memoir, supplied by Tom Donovan, may the original as it’s priced at 3/6 as opposed to mine which is 2/-. Internally they are both the 1930 edition.

9th August

A 2nd & final edition of ‘For Remembrance’ detailing the lives of Soldier Poets who have fallen in the War is a generally more substantial publication than the 1st issue & with a more dramatic jacket. Blood & Iron, the title taken from Bismark’s famous speech on German Unification, is a War Correspondent’s view of the devastation in the War zones. & finally some verses written in Hesepe prison camp & the memoirs of Brigadier Cumming dealing with his time in charge of the 91st & 110th Brigades.

2nd August

Last entry for a week & a few more gems from this previously unseen source. Floyd’s book on Best-Dunkley is rare at the best of times particularly in this slightly tatty jacket. Disappointingly it has the plain text jacket which so many of the other ‘On Active Service Series’ have. The jacket of Capt. Pluschow’s escape memoir shows him still interned & looking particularly sullen. Bertram Ratcliffe’s novelised memoir of his time as a POW at Ingolstadt was apparently a best seller in 1935 but has now vanished. His sardine tin in which a map of Bavaria was secreted is in Leeds University Library. And finally Captain Mousley’s time in Kut.

29th July

An earlier than expected update to accommodate some truly spectacular copies that have come my way. The Gurner is on site already but this copy is as good as it gets - seemingly fresh off the press. The Fiery Way was on-site in its identical US edition but this UK one is also in pristine condition. The Greenwell was only present as a b&w version so you can now see the dabs of green text. And the Redvers Dent is simply one of the best Canadian Novels of the War. If anyone can identify the jacket artists for the first 2 books then I’d be most grateful.

27th July

The story of the German surface raider, the Emden, seems to have been narrated more often than that of almost any other ship of the War. Although she operated for only 3 months, she managed to sink some 30 ships before being herself sunk by the Australian Cruiser, Sydney, at the Battle of Cocos on 9th November 1914. The story is told by her 2nd Torpedo officer, Franz Joseph, a seemingly rather lowly rank for a Hohenzollern Prince! Thanks to Nick Fletcher for the later edition of Pollard’s ‘Fire Eater’. Despite the scarcity of the 1st edition it seems to have gone through several printings up until the 2nd War probably helped by Pollard’s burgeoning reputation as a thriller writer.

22nd July

2 books from JRF today including a very welcome copy of the US edition of Anthony Bertram’s ‘The Sword Falls’, a novel about an elderly cockney clerk & the devastating effect War has on him & his family. Bertram was the biographer of Paul Nash & the special interest in the book lies in the rarity of the UK edition which reputedly sported a jacket by Eric Ravilious but of which no record exists. My own copy looks as if it only lost said jacket a short time ago. The title page below is of a rare copy of an RAMC memoir of a Casualty Clearing Station in 1917 - 18 by Capt. Ramsay. It seems to have been privately printed in 1919 & the only other copy I can find is in the Imperial War Museum, there being no copy in the BL. Google has no information to offer. A lucky ebay find!

17th July

I’ve always been rather intrigued by Wilfrid Ewart, probably because of his bizarre death, when, having survived the War, he was shot through the eye by a stray bullet during the New Year’s Eve celebrations in Mexico in 1922. Most of his books were published posthumously but he did achieve major success with ‘Way of Revelation’ in 1921 - a book now surprisingly scarce. His biography by fellow Scots Guard, Stephen Graham, gives a good account of his War service although Ewart doesn’t appear as a particularly endearing character.

Agnes Weston was known as the ‘Mother of the Navy’ for founding the Royal Sailor’s Rest in Portsmouth. First published in 1909, this 1915 edition was updated to take in the current war. And finally, Private Pinkerton, in its superb jacket was rescued from a rain-soaked bootfair only yesterday by one of our contributors. How fortunate was that!

13th July

Having just bought the Air adventure story below, I thought I’d add a few books to the children’s novel page which I’ve been holding onto for some time. My attention was drawn, in George Simmers excellent Great War Fiction blog, to a series of nursery stories by Chloe Preston called the Peek-a-Boos. Popular in the early part of the last century, with some 23 different titles in the series, they seem to have embraced the War wholeheartedly. I’m particularly intrigued by the cover image on ‘Peek-a-Boos in Wartime’ of a child pulling a shell on a small trolley. I wonder if such an image would be permissible today in relation to current conflicts, perhaps being shown astride a Cruise missile!

N.B. A word of caution to those wishing to investigate the Peek-a-Boos further using Google - it has a rather different meaning today than during that long ago Edwardian summer.

9th July

Today’s mixed bag includes one of those books which will probably never grace a collectors shelves - ‘Somewhere in France’ a volume of short stories by Louise Heilgers. Now totally forgotten it is only of interest because of its delightful jacket. Whilst undoubtedly quite scarce one wouldn’t expect to pay more than £30 - 40 for this later edition. The dealer, J & M Books of Liverpool, would like £280 for it! The tilted image of ‘Way of Revelation’ has been pulled from an old Ebay auction. It’s the US edition from the same year as its 1st appearance but I suspect it may be a 2nd imp. However as I despair of ever seeing the UK 1st this will have to suffice. It’s too important a War novel not to be represented here.

5th July

Having despaired of ever finding anything worthwhile on Ebay again, a real gem turns up in the shape of Major Crum’s ‘With Riflemen, Scouts & Snipers’. Privately printed in 1921 it tells of his time with the King’s Royal Rifle Corps & the setting up of a sniping school. This fine memoir seems to have eluded the print-on-demanders but it surely needs to be brought back into the spotlight. Books on Sniping are few & far between - I can only find 2 others on my shelves - Hesketh Prichard’s ‘Sniping in France’ & Forbes ‘Student & Sniper-Sergeant’. Although only in wrappers I’m placing it in the main index rather than lose it elsewhere.

A fine catalogue from Tom Donovan today found me only a hairsbreadth away from ordering Fryer’s ‘Reminiscences of a Grenadier’ being certain I didn’t have it. Fortunately I had a small doubt & indeed there it was on the shelf. If only I had a USB port in my head I could carry my catalogue around with me! It’s definitely a sign of having too many books.

30th June

Yesterday to the Tate to see the excellent ‘Vorticism’ exhibition. Rather sniffily received by the critics - “ provincial minor movement dwarfed by what was going on elsewhere, etc” but a real pleasure, maybe heightened by the emphasis on Lewis’ Blast magazine, which is given 2 rooms in the show & which I was fortunate enough to pick up rather cheaply some years ago. Most pleasing however was to see the number of War paintings by Nevinson on display both in the exhibition and as part of a new hang elsewhere in the gallery. Which moves me to show the jacket on his first volume of War pictures which I’ve had for many years but never put online before. Also some tales of the French Red Cross and 1 more from the Pritchard collection.

24th June

Although I don’t usually bother with Unit Histories this one of the 1st Birmingham Battalion has such a superb jacket that it has to be included. It comes courtesy of Tom Donovan who’ll probably be including it in his next catalogue but its rarity, coming as it does from a small local publisher, may mean it’ll be rather expensive! David Pritchard has provided the US edition of Patrick Macgill’s fine memoir of the battle of Loos. Now if only someone had the UK editions of his other elusive titles, The Red Horizon & Fear, in their jackets, I’d be most pleased. + 2 variant jackets on one of Homer Randall’s ‘Army Boys’ series.

20th June

Probably the most outstanding of all anthologies of personal memoirs today in the shape of Bernard Newman’s ‘Anthology of Armageddon’. Coming from a minor publisher in 1935 it’s become remarkably scarce in its jacket being the only copy I’ve ever come across. Its late publication meant it caught almost all the major memoirs. From David Pritchard is another addition to the ‘On Active Service Series’ & most importantly a colour copy of Gristwood’s ‘The Somme’ which I used to see quite often when I didn’t want it & now never come across when I do!

16th June

I’ve been reading Henry Day’s memoir ‘Macedonian Memories’ and came across this in the preface by Field Marshall Sir George Milne. It would doubtless be welcomed by today’s Revisionist historians - “After the flood of somewhat unpleasant war literature, ...the general public will no doubt turn with relief to a book such as this, which looks upon war in the healthy British way. It often appears that the authors of many of our war books were either temperamentally unfit for active service from the beginning, or else returned in a state which rendered them unfit to write about it” Probably pinko, sandle-wearing conchies as well! It takes a FM to know what it was really like in the trenches.

A couple today for the paperbacks page & a couple for the ‘On Active Service Series’ page.

11th June

After grumbling about the book fairs I find I did rather well in the end. The ABA at Olympia gets more & more irrelevant - it’s mostly an investment opportunity for the wealthy these days. The PBFA at the Novotel however was a real pleasure, mostly due to Tony & Gill Tiffin’s stand where I found a long sought copy of Jacomb’s ‘Torment’ in a fine if dull jacket, Day’s ‘Macedonian Memories’ (both on site already) & the rare history of the WAAC shown below. That unfortunately left me too short of money to take advantage of John Marrin’s stand which among many fine things had a UK 1st in superb jacket of Edlef Koppen’s ‘Higher Command’, only the US edition of which is here. He even had a splendid copy of Lushington’s ‘Gambardier’ at less than a quarter the price fetched at Bloomsbury recently.

5th June

The week of the London June Bookfairs arrives with the usual degree of hope invariably turned to disappointment after a few hours. As you enter Olympia you’re confronted by the glitzy stands of the Modern First dealers fronted by besuited businessmen standing guard over the vitrines of priceless artefacts like Bond Street jewellers. A few hours later, head splitting & eyes glazing, you near the end of the stalls at the Novotel & wonder, having failed to buy anything, whether its worth spending £5 on a bottle of lager at the bar before having a final desperate search or just giving up and trekking all the way back to Kensington Olympia station for the long wait for a train to anywhere. Who knows, by Saturday they may be a clutch of mega rarities displayed below!

31st May

Later the same day I’ve added some new books. Herbert Ward’s sketches of French soldiers, Trevor Allen revisiting the battlefields in the Middle East, the US ed of Von Unruh’s ‘Way of Sacrifice’ and the long awaited F W Harvey (the jacket in rather a state - the front & back covers stuck together to hide the missing spine panel!). He now sits alongside his lifelong friend and fellow poet, Ivor Gurney.

31st May

Before adding more books to this page I thought I’d add yet another new page. Looking around my collection I see numerous personal memoirs, many of outstanding quality, that have been waiting for many years to find their jackets but probably never will. It seems that personal memoirs, particularly those published soon after the War, are among the scarcest of all the books on this site. So rather than let them languish in obscurity for ever I’ve scanned their title pages & put them on the page below called ‘Jacketless Memoirs’. I may add some more later on.

28th May

An intermediate update today for just 1 book, John Cropton’s ‘The Road to Nowhere’. Published by Hurst & Blackett in 1936 , this book seems to have fallen completely off the radar. Illustrated by the author, the first half of the book deals with his childhood in Kent but it’s the second part detailing the start of the War, his enlistment & service at Gallipoli with the Royal Naval Division that merits our interest. Whilst never involved in any heroic actions (only alluding briefly to his involvement at Passchendaele) this is a very fine, sensitive & balanced memoir ending with the now unemployed author despairing for his future. Why it has passed all the biographers & bibliographers by escapes me - it deserves to be up there with the best of the War memoirs. It must have sold reasonably well at the time, this being a second impression, although this publisher was often rather cautious with their print runs - Hitchcock’s ‘Stand To’ is notoriously hard to find as a 1st impression. There are 2 jacketless copies on ABE at £66 & £135.

25th May

Back from France to find that several books from the recent Bloomsbury sale have already found their way on to the market. A particularly interesting proof copy of Carstairs’ ‘Generation Missing’ from Tom Donovan with the author’s corrections. Most of today’s batch come from JRF who’s supplied me with some fine covers recently. The US edition of the Archibald owes its faded appearance to the fact that it’s printed on silver foil! A book of poems by F W Harvey is on its way to me from ebay which will allow me to bring this fine but neglected poet to the site.

17th May

Back to earth after the heady delights of the London auction scene. R. E. Vernede could be thought of as a major minor poet, much anthologised without being instantly recognisable. Frederic Villiers was a War artist who worked almost exclusively for the Illustrated London News. His remarkable globe trotting career saw him present at nearly every major battle from the 1870s to WW1 - from Plevna, Tel-el-Kebir & Omdurman up to the Marne. The strangely titled ‘Bees Wings’ seems to be a personal memoir by a Methodist minister about which I can find no information but seems to be remarkably scarce. And finally a few ballads from Australia. No more for a week now.

13th May

Yesterday’s sale at Bloomsbury Book Auctions saw some spectacular prices which I can only put down to the unseasonably hot weather. Owen’s Poems for just over £1800 (with buyers premium) is not perhaps unusual although with the tissue guard to the photo missing & a copy on ABE for half that price maybe it is. John McCrae’s ‘In Flanders Fields’ at a tad over £1500 seems madness to me. Described as ‘very rare in its jacket’ the copy on this site was bought for around £25 & as I recall was one of a pair on offer at the time. As to Lushington’s ‘Gambardier’ & Junger’s ‘Storm of Steel’ , whilst it’s nice to see them fetching over £1000 each, if that level was achieved by other equally important books then the additions to this site would rapidly dry up. Remarque’s ‘All Quiet’ once again failed to sell - dealer’s seem to be wildly overestimating its rarity. The 1st had quite a large print run & the jacket remained completely unchanged through several reprints so it’s quite easy to marry 1sts with a later jacket. A few of my purchases can be seen below.

8th May

A little volume of poetry from the 17th Battalion, Highland Light Infantry. Mostly written in barracks for the battalion magazine ‘The Outpost’ it manages to achieve a quality usually lacking in similar publications. The copy of Harding’s ‘Escape Fever’ is the 2nd imp. as is the existing on-site copy so I can’t be sure which image was used on the 1st issue.

Although the last veteran has now gone, we shouldn’t forget that there are still many alive who lived through the War and will have memories of relatives returning from the front and soldiers parading through the streets. I wonder if anyone has bothered to gather together their memories. Claude Choules was born in 1901, the same year in which the last veteran of the Alamo died & a year before the last Napoleonic veteran passed away. I see from Wikipaedia that there are still some 52 people alive who were born in the 19th Century!!

5th May

Today we mark the passing of Claude Choules, the last surviving combatant of the War. The following is taken from the BBC website as is the photo below :

Born in Pershore, Worcestershire, in March 1901, Mr Choules tried to enlist in the Army at the outbreak of WWI to join his elder brothers who were fighting, but was told he was too young.

He lied about his age to become a Royal Navy rating, joining the battleship HMS Revenge on which he saw action in the North Sea aged 17.

He witnessed the surrender of the German fleet in the Firth of Forth in November 1918, then the scuttling of the fleet at Scapa Flow.

Mr Choules remembered WWI as a "tough" life, marked by occasional moments of extreme danger.

2nd May

Back from holiday brings a very welcome catalogue courtesy of Bloomsbury Book Auctions of their sale for 12th May which contains a very substantial collection of WW1 books, many of which will be familiar from this site. It’s the first substantial sale of this type at a major Auction House that I can recall in a long time with lots of colour pictures of titles such as Junger’s ‘Storm of Steel’ & Lushington’s ‘Gambardier’. The Gurney below is taken from the catalogue in a rather shredded but rare jacket, but it at last brings the poet to the site. My recent purchase of the Blunden edition of Owen’s Poems prompts me to add the first collection of his poems in Edith Sitwell’s ‘Wheels 1919’ The cover is by William Roberts and I’m unable to ascertain wether or not this series ever came in jackets (I suspect only the last volume did).

21st April

The plain cream jacket below is not a mistake but the covering for one of the finest but most neglected of War memoirs. ‘The First Three Months’ by Capt. E. J. Needham tells of the 3rd. Batt., Northamptonshire Regiment during the early months of the War. Few writers have captured so well the dispiriting nature of the retreat from Mons culminating in the Battle of the Aisne (worth searching for but the only copy on ABE at the moment is very overpriced). The Farmer’s Boy is a privately printed souvenir of the 5th Service Batt., Dorsetshire Regiment. It contains a useful, short account of the Battalion’s War record. As far as I can ascertain there is no record of this publication anywhere!

17th April

Has anyone else noticed how the price of these books has been creeping up lately. Personal memoirs with any degree of scarcity now seem to start at £100 whilst £2-300 is not unusual. If I didn’t need to buy any more I’d be happy but there are numerous titles still to find.

Although this site has never aspired to being a definitive guide to War literature, I like to think that most of the major works are here. But I fear I still have a long way to go. Just glancing at my shelves of jacketless books I can see several classics as yet unrepresented here : - L of C, Galloper at Ypres, How I Filmed the War, Sniping in France, Way of Revelation, Confessions of a Private, Reminiscences of a Grenadier (currently on Ebay) etc, etc, etc. Maybe I should have collected the novels of Harper Lee instead!

13th April 2011

Today’s batch includes an unrecorded front line narrative by Reginald Larking ‘Active Service 1918’ rendered, somewhat unusually, in dialogue. He served in the London Rifle Brigade. The final volume of Pepys Junior’s ‘Great Warr Diary’ was advertised on ABE as in a damaged dustjacket - an odd use of the word as all that remains is what you see below. No response from the seller!! Company K is the US edition & I thought it was time we had an example of that most ubiquitous of all War Memoirs by our wartime leader.

8th April

Suddenly I’m overwhelmed with new images. Pride of place must go to the UK first of Capt. Nobbs ‘Englishman Kamerad’ perhaps better known under its earlier US title ‘To the Right of the British Line’. He served with the London Rifle Brigade & was blinded on the Somme. I’ve spent all day reading it and it’s a truly remarkable record of stoical suffering. His description of the action at Leuze Wood is certainly vivid. A real rarity. The UK ed of ‘Cruise of the Raider Wolf’ is a very drab affair compared to its’ overseas editions. And the UK & US versions of Viereck’s take on Allied Propaganda.

4th April

This morning brings a really first-rate catalogue from Turner Donovan with numerous rarities, one of which will be gracing these pages. Some scarce volumes of the Official History and a full set of the War in the Air for a meagre £500 (if anyone buys it but already has Maps. Vol.5 then I’m your man!) Waiting for various volumes to arrive so more from the reserve stock. I must apologise for ‘The Open Prison’ by Aimee Scott - I can find no information on it whatsoever but I must have kept the image knowing it to be War related. Any information would be useful.

I see that Bloomsbury Book Auctions are selling the entire stock of the late Nigel Williams, the modern firsts dealer, in 2 weeks time. His stock was always interesting if rather pricey and here it is, mostly in multiple lots with quite low estimates. It just goes to show the huge gap between Auction values and Dealers expectations!

31st March

Returning from France finds me rather bereft of new titles so I’m forced into using images from my reserve stock about which I have little information. A guide to Submarine Warfare, the experiences of Officers of the Trench Artillery, A French Chaplain at War & a novel concerning a scientists’ attempts to bring the War to an early end.

23rd March

Today's batch includes a lovely early jacket on the first volume of Michael MacDonagh’s account of the Irish Regiments in the War and a previously unrecorded novel of an Airman struggling to cope after the Armistice. The striking deco jacket is by B. Wallace.

18th March

Shortage of time limits me to only 3 new inclusions today. I don’t normally collect Unit Histories (the Inniskilling Fusiliers is from JRF) but I so liked the jacket on this history of the 2/20th London Battalion by Captain Elliot that I couldn’t resist. Described by Cyril Falls as ‘faithful and interesting but not aspiring to literary distinction’ it’s like most similar accounts, packed with information but devoid of emotion. The jacket & internal illustrations are by one Sidney A. Court.

14th March

Yesterday to the London Bookfairs and what a dismal experience it was. The one at the Royal National was as good as usual although often difficult to find a dealer at his stall to take one’s money! But whatever’s happened to the PBFA fair? Since its move from the Russell to the Holiday Inn it seems to have lost most of its dealers - I doubt there were a quarter the number there used to be and it detained me for less than 20 mins. Perhaps book collecting really has become a thing of the past. Today’s post brings a better copy of ‘Death in the Air’ than that on-site already & a seemingly unrecorded War novel set largely at the Front (not in Hager but a copy formed part of the Barry Maurer collection)

10th March

Just as I’d given up on it the postman arrived with the Grabenhorst - how they managed to lose it for nearly 4 weeks I’ll never know. It was worth the wait as it’s a superb period jacket and a book much liked by Cyril Falls. It’s author served in Flanders & this semi-autobiographical novel tells the story of a young officer candidate, a Fahnenjunker, during the battle of 3rd Ypres. It contains some excellent writing particularly in its description of the effect of shell shock on its hero, Volkenborn.

7th March

It’s been 25 years since I last saw a copy but I’ve finally tracked down the UK edition of Patrick Miller’s ‘The Natural Man’ A prize winning novel set almost entirely in the front-line trenches it follows the fortunes of a group of artillery officers. The author’s real name was George Gordon Macfarlane. Information on him is scarce but there was a 2nd Lt. in the RFA who is likely to be the same man. He wrote 4 other novels all of which were only published in limited editions by the Golden Cockerel Press. The Frenssen tells the story of life in a German village during the War. I’m only putting 2 new books up as I think Frank Buckles deserves to have his face here for a little longer.

4th March

I was going to show the rare jacket for Georg Grabenhorst’s ‘Zero Hour’ but Royal Mail have contrived to lose it in the 30 mile journey from the bookseller to my house, so if it turns up on Ebay it’s mine! Strange how things arrive in pairs (like buses) - 2 copies of Sydney Rogerson’s ‘Last of the Ebb’, previously almost impossible in jacket, have turned up on ABE in the last couple of weeks. The 2 books below are still available on Ebay but having treated myself to a UK 1st of Patrick Miller’s ‘Natural Man’ I’ll let them go by.

2nd March

Sad to note the passing, shortly after his 110th birthday, of Frank Buckles, the last surviving American veteran of the War. Born a few months before the assassination of President McKinley, Frank acted as a general driver in Winchester before being shipped to France where he drove wounded soldiers to hospital. During the Second War he was captured whilst on business in Manilla & served three and a half years as a civilian internee in various Japanese prison camps, finally emerging weighing less than 7 stone! He was awarded the Legion d’honneur in 1999 by Jacques Chirac.

28th February

My sympathies go out to any readers in New Zealand after the terrible earthquake. The tragic loss of life will have caused much sadness. One of my main contributors, Andrew Harrison, lives in Christchurch but has fortunately been spared from too much damage. Seeing the ruined church I’m reminded of the Cloth Hall in Ypres during the War & the thought that what took months of German shelling could be achieved by nature in minutes.

24th February

Back from France. I noticed that whilst viewing this site on different computers, the fonts displayed vary, possibly with the screen size or resolution. The title of the site is in Invite Engraved SF (a rather 30s style font), but seems to default to Ariel on other screens (including Ipads). So if it all looks rather bland I can assure you it wasn’t meant to look that way. Amongst today’s batch is a superb memoir of the work of the 51st Highland Division Field Ambulance by Col. Rorie, DSO.(a lucky find on Ebay!) There is a modern reprint from Naval & Military press which uses the image from this jacket.

14th February

4 rather striking jackets today amongst them a superb jacket for Lesley Smith’s nursing memoir ‘Four Years out of Life’. Unfortunately this particular contributor rarely leaves me any information on his books origins so it’s often a matter of guesswork. The Library of Congress doesn’t list an American issue whereas the BL lists 2 issues in the same year so I assume this is the other one but which takes precedence I don’t know. So PLEASE, publisher & date if you could!

10th February

Further additions to the new Official History page courtesy of John Marrin including a photograph of the entire series. Also a rare early jacket on Klaxon’s (J G Bower) ‘HMS’ to add to the 1930’s reprint already on-site. And Happy Birthday to Frank Buckles on his 110th & to Florence Green who’ll be 110 in 9 days time.

7th February 2011

Notable in today’s batch are the letters of Mabel Dearmer from a field hospital in Serbia. She was a children’s book author & illustrator & mother of the last of the War poets, Geoffrey Dearmer (Poems. Heinemann 1918). She served as a nurse with an ambulance unit for 4 months before succumbing to Enteric Fever. Her eldest son, Christopher, was killed only a month later at Gallipoli. Geoffrey died in 1996 aged 103. There are also a few additions to the German Editions page.

4th February

Amongst today's offerings is a particularly rare collection of stories of the Mesopotamian Campaign. Written by the biographer of Shaw & Conan Doyle ,Hesketh Pearson served with the ASC in the Middle East. Although presented here as short stories he admitted in his autobiography that they were entirely true in every detail. A fuller commentary on the book can be found in George Simmers’ always excellent ‘Great War Fiction’ blog. Click here to see one of his 2 articles on Pearson. The War Wounds collection although published at the beginning of the 2nd War is almost entirely drawn from experiences of the 1st.

1st February

A mixed batch including a courageous Russian carrier pigeon, an American evacuation hospital and the disrupted lives of a family living by Lake Geneva during the War.

27th January

A quick reload to shift some of the backlog including the autobiography of General Maude’s successor in Mesopotamia & the memoirs of an Austrian escaper.

26th January

Masses of new books to put on site but for today I’ve finally put up a ‘Collecting the Official History’ page. There’s a link below or you can click here to go to it. Please let me know of any mistakes or additional information.

22nd January

One of those compilation albums that were so popular during the War - this one showing the humour of the Canadian Expeditionary Force. I would imagine that the sight of the 2 ‘Byng Boys’ pictured on the front would have had the Germans high-tailing it back to Berlin in no time. Some further views of the European conflict provided by Geoff Miller. I seem to have acquired over 80 vols.of the Official History now so I must get on with the page on collecting the series.

17th January

Today brings 2 books by writers who were rather favourably compared to more famous contemporaries - Charles Warr was called ‘The Kipling of the Trenches’ by the Aberdeen Journal & the poet Bernard Trotter was known as the Canadian Rupert Brooke. Also 2 views of the Gallipoli campaign by a journalist & a diplomat. The jacket for the Warr is by Helen McKie who provided the images for several other books on the site.

12th January

A group of War novels today from Fons and 1 from me of a French woman & her adopted child in occupied northern France. I was watching Polanski’s ‘The Ninth Gate’ the other day. It’s the perfect film for the bibliophile - the only film I know wholly devoted to the search for rare books, albeit rather more exotic than the ones displayed here. Maybe it’s the uncanny resemblance between myself & Johnny Depp that makes me so fond of it!

9th January

The Official History page is not yet ready as I’m waiting for yet more examples to arrive - Veterinary Services, Italy & one of the Order of Battle volumes - and I thought I’d put on images of the cloth bindings as many of the series are distinctive. Does anyone have a picture of a Munitions volume or one of the suppressed ones just for completeness.

5th January 2011

A batch of images from a new contributor, Geoffrey Miller, will soon be appearing. The arrival of yet another Official History volume prompts me into creating a new page on the series which should be a definitive listing with a guide to their relative availability. Looking at the site again on an I-Pad shows many of the captions disappearing beneath the images. I hope this doesn’t happen on all small screens - maybe I shouldn’t assume that the view I get on my 20 inch model is typical. Let me know if you notice any problems.

29th December

Spent the Christmas period reading Juliet Nicholson’s ‘The Great Silence’ which deals with the period immediately following the War. A good read full of amusing anecdotes but largely concerned with the doings of the Aristocracy & heavily reliant on stories from her native Sussex.

23rd December

Probably the last posting of the year unless the endless diet of TV repeats forces me back to the computer. Amongst the offerings is this scarce play from 1924 set in an RFC mess & a front-line trench in September 1918. It was briefly revived as part of an ITV 4-part Play of the Week series on the Great War in 1963. You can read the details here. And a Happy Christmas to all (both of) my readers.

18th December

Snowed in again so not much mail getting through. Fortunately I have a reserve supply of images including this excellent volume on road building in Salonica that I picked up recently. Glanced into one of the Surgery volumes of the Official History and rather wish I hadn’t. The colour images of gangrenous wounds and head injuries remind you of just how terrible it could be in the trenches under fire.

15th December

As it’s time to spread some Christmas cheer I thought this batch of Animals in War volumes supplied by Fons Oltheten might be appropriate. The first batch of the Official Histories has finally made its way to me from the frozen north. When you see the sheer wealth of detail contained in these books you can’t help but be overwhelmed by the effort involved. No wonder it took some 28 years to complete!

10th December

The snow is finally melting so hopefully some books are on their way to me from the frozen north. I think my pursuit of the Official History series is getting out of hand - 14 volumes are now on their way! Spent a very pleasant few hours with Tom Donovan on Wednesday (thanks for the Turkish Delight) which has yielded enough new images to keep the site supplied for some time. Also some more from several contributors & from me. Tom seemed to be disappearing under mountains of new stock so I think we can look forward to some interesting Catalogues next year. He’s also published the first part of a fascinating new book on the medals & decorations of Indian Regiments from the beginning of the 19th Century onwards. A truly massive undertaking & essential if that’s your area of interest. Also nice to see a jacket for Aubrey Smith’s (Rifleman’s) account of life in the ranks. One of the great classics.

5th December

The peculiar squiggle defacing the home page is a facebook tag put on at my wife's suggestion - she’s on it but I’m not. I may remove it shortly! A batch of recent additions from my contributors below. My own recent purchases have once again been of the Official History variety - several rare volumes coming my way via ABE - The final volume of France & Flanders and 8 of the Medical Services set sold off by a reference library in Hendon. I’m also reading an excellent book on the War Poets by Harry Ricketts - Strange Meetings - which details various encounters between many of the leading poets.

29th November

Just 1 new book today but for me it encapsulates the whole raison d’etre of the site. Published in 1917, its author hiding behind the name of the Greek god of medicine, it’s a series of vignettes of the life of a surgeon at sea during the first years of the War. It typifies the type of book that would have been lapped up both by those at home & by returning sailors. It’s authors’ true identity has been long forgotten as has the book itself, but its superb jacket by G. F. Williams raises it above the mass of similar works. A rare survivor which now takes its humble place amongst its more lofty fellows.

26th November 2010

I see that at last ABE have taken note of collectors concerns and inserted a ‘Not print-on-demand’ button. These apologies for books have been multiplying with alarming frequency lately & have threatened to bring down the whole enterprise. The rot probably began when they were taken over by Amazon. Maybe they’ll now reduce the ludicrously high number of books they claim to have on site. Only really 1 book to add to the site today - the UK & US editions of Churchill’s History of the Great War - shamelessly lifted from the Churchill Book Specialist website.

22nd November

On the day Book & Magazine Collector publish my letter on dust jackets they go out of business! It may not have occupied the intellectual uplands of say The Private Library but it always carried some useful bibliographies & had improved greatly in recent years. After the demise of Rare Book Review not so long ago it was the only antiquarian book magazine available at the local newsagents. In their final editorial they say this hobby of ours is in decline. Judging by the number of second-hand books for sale on-line it seems the opposite is true.

I must get up earlier in the mornings as by the time I read the new Turner Donovan catalogue the only copy seen in a long while of that rare tunneling memoir, One Mole Rampant, had gone. I suspect that John Marrin’s copy of Broger’s ‘Pillbox 17’ at £750 may not have flown the nest quite so quickly! Whilst it’s nice to see ones books rising in value if this level was sustained we might as well all give up!

13th November

Back from the excellent Military Bookfair at Deepcut barracks. It enabled me to complete my Military Operations Mesopotamia set & more importantly produced a fine copy of Gee & Shaw’s ‘A Record of D 245 Battery’ It was on-site already but I’ve put the whole double-sided image by Norman Tennant on now. The Trevelyan is one of the few works detailing the Italian Campaign - he was in charge of the Red Cross unit. It seems to have met with official approval as this copy caries a compliments slip from the Italian Embassy!

9th November

An additional posting for my own benefit. Having managed to find a very reasonable copy of Military Operations Togoland & the Cameroons on ABE I find I’ve reached a milestone in my collecting of this elusive series - 55 volumes got, 55 to go (the recent first publication of The Occupation of Constantinople making, I believe,110 volumes). To that end I’ve added a list of the missing volumes to my Books Wanted page. Obviously I’m prepared to settle for copies without their jackets but I’m not looking for the recent reprints from Naval & Military Press.

7th November

I’ve been reading an excellent new book on animals in the Great War called ‘Tommy’s Ark’ by Richard van Emden. It draws on material from some of the best War memoirs amongst them T. S. Hope’s ‘Winding Road Unfolds’ This must be one of the few major works to have so far evaded the print-on-demanders, maybe because it had a brief re-issue as a paperback in 1965. ABE lists 3 copies of that issue from £45 - £150 & 1 of the original 1937 ed. lacking both jacket & title page for £340. Further delving into Google revealed that it was the subject of some debate on the Great War Forum recently with requests, mostly unfulfilled, for information on the author. Now that’s where the jacket proves its’ usefulness as the rear flap gives full biographical details along with a photograph. So if anyone wants further info on an author I’ll be happy to check any jackets I may have.

3rd November

2 excellent buys from E-Bay although neither for the site. The limited edition of the anthology ‘A Martial Medley’ (1 of 75) signed by all the contributors most notable of whom are John Brophy & Charles Edmonds (Carrington) for under £20 & a rare 1st of ‘Officers Died in the Great War’ from 1919 - paperback & near mint. A chastening document - 260 pages, double-column, single line per casualty in no more than 6pt. Print ; the Soldiers Died equivalent ran to some 80 vols. I believe. The list begins with Lord Kitchener.

30th October

A mixed bag today including the 1st Canadian edition of Acland’s ‘All Else is Folly’ from a new contributor James Calhoun, Stephen Graham’s reminiscences of the battlefields ‘Challenge of the Dead’ and a rare view from inside a British prison camp from Paul Cohen-Portheim. 2 major book fairs coming up which will hopefully provide additions to the site - Chelsea on the 5th November & the Military bookfair at Deepcut barracks on the 13th, the latter being a definite must.

25th October

No you haven’t arrived at the wrong site; the 2 unlikely additions below can both be considered War literature. The title story in the penultimate Holmes collection has our hero unmasking a dastardly German spy in our midst, whilst Zane Grey leaves behind the purple sage to tell the story of a returning soldier who finds his fellow townsfolk have slipped into decadent ways - he should come into Brighton on a Saturday night!! The UK edition of the Holmes is yours for a mere £25,000 from Adrian Harrington Rare Books. It’s still more often seen than many of the books on this site however!

21st October

An unusual edition of Rupert Brooke’s ‘1914 & other poems’ found by Andrew Harrison in New Zealand. With its clear glassine-type cover and solander box it looks like a deluxe issue but I can find no mention of it in the standard bibliography or in the British Library. Any thoughts would be appreciated. I’ve finally found a copy of Mackenzie’s ‘Greek Memories’ to complete the quartette. Supposedly suppressed on the day of publication it’s less scarce than might be expected, the 4th volume ‘Aegean Memories’ being the hardest to find. A message for Nick Fletcher if you’re still reading this - my emails to you keep bouncing back as undeliverable.

15th October

Just how much is a book worth? The Ian Hamilton below was picked up on Ebay last week for £4.99 with free postage. The single copy on ABE is nearly £300 with shipping from Australia. His thoughts on the final phase of the Gallipoli campaign are interesting but they’ve been reiterated many times since - it just seems a trifle dear! I’ll entertain offers over £150!! The Sitwell was supposed to go alongside the UK 1st but when the copy arrived it was printed in 1974. I suppose at £2.99 I can’t complain but you do have to be careful with ABE descriptions. It always pays to get confirmation first!

11th October

A new batch from Fons to filter in over the next few weeks and a few from me including the rare revised edition of the Naval Operations set which has even retained its jacket round the map volume! I’ve had some thoughts on the scarcity of dust jackets prompted by an article on 19th century jackets in Book & Magazine Collector for this month. I rather suspect that most books may never have had them! They’ll be publishing my letter in the next issue. An excellent catalogue from Turner Donovan today but I’ve had to resist as I’ve spent all available cash on my other book passion - Illustrated books from the 1860’s!

1st October

So the Great War will finally come to an end on Sunday as the Germans cough-up the final £50 million of their War debts. At least there is still one combatant, Claude Choules, alive to see it. Perhaps they should give it to him. Some new additions from David & Helen Pritchard who seem to be finding new things more easily than I do. I’ve also put a link on the Siegfried Sassoon page to a site dedicated to the author, run by David Gray, which shows most of Sassoon’s original publications.

15th September

My thanks again to Andrew Harrison for providing 3 of today’s new additions. Alongside these & hiding behind one of the dullest jackets imaginable are the letters of Rothesay Stuart Wortley, an RFC pilot with No. 22 (Bristol Fighter) Squadron. This collection of his letters & diaries gives a really vivid picture of a pilots life in the War & is quite easy to find sans jacket. It even boasts a short memoir jointly written by Duff Cooper & John Buchan.

10th September

Only pictorial cloth bindings today,2 of them from New Zealand sent in by Andrew Harrison. The Hugo Morgan is one of that elusive series from Hodder & Stoughton called ‘The Soldier Books’. According to the BL catalogue there were 9 books in the series all published in 1916, an early set of first-hand narratives. You can see 5 of them on the Pictorial Bindings page. Should you have any of the 4 missing titles I’d be most eager to see them. They are:- Suvla Bay & After by ‘Juvenis’, Sun, Sand & Sin by Joan Kennedy (sounds like a Harrison Marks film from the 60s!!), The Padre by ‘Temporary Chaplain’ & Odd Shots by ‘One of the Jocks’.

4th September

Rather a dull batch today I’m afraid! The Arthur Innes Adam is a series of letters from the front by a Captain in the Cambridgeshires. If you search for this on ABE you’ll turn up 77 copies of which only 1 is a real book, the rest being Print on Demand. ABE’s claim to have 140 million books on line seems rather misleading in the light of this - maybe 1.4 million might be nearer the mark. I think as many of us as possible should write to them complaining or this much beloved organisation is in danger of sinking beneath the virtual waves. A simple button to exclude POD titles would do the trick (The dog book yields 67 titles of which only 60 are imaginary!) The Soldiers’ Tales for Boys volume reads rather like an Alan Bennett sermon from Beyond the Fringe finding religious parallels in everyday occurrences.

29th August

All the books that have come my way lately were already on-site including Spears ‘Liaison 1914’, Brice’s ‘Battle Book of Ypres’ & Lambert’s ‘Over the Top’. However I have treated myself to an Ipad & it is a truly remarkable piece of equipment. It could have been designed with this site in mind. The ability to expand images by just moving ones fingers apart works really well with the images here - most of them can just about stand being blown up to full screen size. It rather makes me wish I’d put the pictures on at higher resolution but then the pages would have taken an age to load and most browsers would have moved on to other things rather than wait. There’s even an App that tells me what all the ships in the channel nearby are and where they’re going. Now how sad is that!

25th August

The loss of decent second-hand bookshops is no better exemplified than by the current London bookshop scene. Whereby in the past it was worthwhile travelling beyond Cecil Court & its environs : to Bloomsbury for Ulysses and others, Bond Street for Biblion, Gloucester & King’s Road for several shops, they’ve all gone now. Cecil Court is still lively but as with all such shops there is a tendency for the stock to silt up and visiting only every couple of months rarely yields anything new. Nonetheless alongside the Compton Mackenzie spy novel below I did find a copy of Charles Morgan’s ‘The Gunroom’ in a reasonable jacket from Nigel Williams. This is one of those books supposedly suppressed on publication like Graves’ Goodbye but which actually seems to be quite common. The jacket remains rather scarce though.

19th August 2010

Back from a long break to find the Bairnsfather biography waiting for me. A rare find on Ebay. A nicely illustrated volume from early in his career. The ‘Aces & Kings’ is from the recent Ebay batch that I missed although the price of this one was higher that a copy currently available from ABE! There have been further additions to the Great War Adventures Magazine page & to the German editions page. I’ve also bought the copy of Williamson’s ‘Happy Days in France & Flanders’ that was on the site already so have put a better picture up on p. 30.

The splendid & exceedingly rare jacket from the John Rhode comes from Mark Sutcliffe Books but was long gone by the time I saw it.

3rd August

I read in the press that Tom Stoppard has scripted a 5-part series from one of the largely forgotten classics of the War, Ford Madox Ford’s Tietjen Quartette. It’s expected to come to the BBC sometime next year. This is bound to increase the demand for War books and will likely further fuel the price rises seen lately - a recent batch of John Hamilton RFC books on Ebay greatly exceeded the sellers expectations. I recently purchased a near mint copy of Olive Dent’s ‘V A D in France’ from 1917 so have replaced the image currently on-site. Thanks to my contributors for 3 of the images below. ‘Hurricane’ is mine and is a novel of the Russian Front during the revolution.

27th July

The Bert Thomas cartoon ‘Arf a Mo, Kaiser’ on the jacket of the Frederick Treves anthology ‘Made in the Trenches’ must be the most enduring image of the plucky British Tommy at War. Worth seeking out, this rare survivor actually contains some excellent writing and reasonably amusing jokes. The Adrienne Thomas gives a fine description of a German Field Hospital at Metz - you’ll be lucky to find another copy though!

21st July

Several books from Andrew Harrison in NZ. I’m expecting a few but they’re probably bouncing around in mid-Atlantic on an old tramp steamer. For those of you in the Sussex area let me recommend a visit to Newhaven Fort. I’m just paid one of my twice yearly visits and it really is a most fascinating place. Mostly displays on the 2nd War with a superb Blitz recreation but also plenty on the Great War with several new displays since last year. Open until the end of October.

18th July

For the first time I’ve found that 3 of the books I’ve just bought for the site were on already - maybe I’ve nearly got them all! Fat chance. The Anthony Bertram comes from Brian Webb’s Design series book on Paul Nash. According to Edmund Blunden’s War Books checklist it’s a War novel but I can find nothing about it on the web so I’ve ordered a jacketless copy to check. His other War novel, ‘The Sword Falls’ has an even rarer jacket than this; Supposedly by Eric Ravilious there are no known surviving copies in the jacket. (‘Here we Ride’ has arrived. It has a 2-page inscription on the endpapers from Bertram explaining the fact that his dog has chewed-up the corners! The only mention of the War I can find in it is a brief mention of some commemorative china on someone’s table. It’s set just after the War, but is definitely not a War Book. I shall leave it on the site however because it allows me to mention his ‘other’ War novel which otherwise won’t get on.)

15th July

There seem to be numerous sites on the net that give a value to one’s website, seemingly based on its commercial potential. This sites value seems to be between £43 & £1300 which compared to Google’s $6.2 Billion doesn’t bode to well for my skills as a budding media mogul. Perhaps I need to apply for a Government grant to fund the further purchase of books in the National interest. Only the Renn follow up below comes from me. It’s definitely a 1st but the cloth is blue with black titles whereas other copies have red on oatmeal.

10th July

Dropped in at Sandham Memorial Chapel today to take my yearly look at Stanley Spencer’s War murals. Each time I see them I find new things to look at - the landscapes at the very top of the pictures are quite breathtaking. I feel I have a connection with them as I bought a tiny sketch by Spencer some years ago which seems to show soldiers in trenches and may be a preliminary working of one of these panels. Of the new books below only the Telegraph volume is mine. It’s from 1914 and the listings on the rear of the jacket show just how many books on the War were being published so soon after its’ start. Remarkable in a non-digital age.

5th July

A new page at last featuring German editions of classic English War literature. Only 5 so far courtesy of Stefan Langheinrich but there should be plenty more to come. Let me know if you have any suitable images. Just because they turfed us out of the World Cup is no reason for me to hold a grudge. See link below my Top 20 list.

1st July

One of those books that I’ve always said I’d give my eyeteeth for turned up last week in John Marrin’s latest catalogue - a 1st issue jacketed copy of Yeates ‘Winged Victory’ It turns out I didn’t value those teeth highly enough as £750 is at least twice as much as I could possibly consider. I hope this doesn’t start a trend for inflated War book prices, especially after Peter Harrington’s entry into the market! Diligent searching can still turn up bargains however as the 4 new books below indicate, costing less than £60 between them. War-time covers are still amongst the most satisfying as the 2 ‘Bartimeus’ titles show.

I shall shortly be inserting a new page for German editions of English/US War books courtesy of Stefan Langheinrich. Watch this space!

22nd June

Just back from a few days in Copenhagen. Not somewhere you’d normally go for second-hand books but I was rather pleasantly surprised to find what must be the best bookshop I’ve been in for years. Rather like the good old days of Holleyman & Treacher and Sextons in Brighton or Thorntons and Waterfields in Oxford. Room after room of books, rare and run-of-the-mill jumbled together. Masses of English amongst the Danish and plenty of War books.It’s called Vangsgaards, 34 - 36 Fiolstraede and they speak English, as do most Danes in the Capital. Worth a detour as Michelin would say. Not much for the site so thanks to Chris Johnson & Andrew Harrison for the Buchan & the 2 Rowland Walkers. I got a nice copy of Purcell’s ‘Further side of No-Man’s-Land’ but it’s onsite already so I won’t change it.

13th June

Alec Waughs’ novel showing the after effects of the War on those who survived has a striking cover by Lynn Ward. The UK edition from Cassell is most elusive. Vyvyan Richards biography of his friend T. E. Lawrence is an enlightening read and comes from a military bookshop I discovered recently in Falmouth - Benford Books at 9 Old High Street. Worth a visit but no amount of searching on the net reveals its existence but I swear it’s there. The Australian edition of Coopers ‘Man who liked Hell’ comes courtesy of Andrew Harrison.

9th June

I don’t know why I thought the ‘Gatsby’ was expensive - there’s another one on-line for £350,000!!

The formidable lady below is Maria Botchkareva, the Russian soldier who formed the charmingly titled ‘Women’s Battalion of Death’ in an attempt to shame the men’s battalions into fighting the Germans and not joining the Bolsheviks. She seems to have had the ear of Karensky and to have told Lenin & Trotsky where to get off! The prose reads rather like a Stalinist propaganda novel with lots of ‘How could I a humble peasant woman speak to such great men’ but she does seem to have been exceedingly brave. She fell foul of the new regime by supporting the Whites and was executed in 1920.

7th June

A remarkable survivor bought at the ABA fair at Olympia on Saturday. Vernon Bartlett’s ‘Mud & Khaki’ from 1917 is virtually mint, not a nick or a mark on the jacket or book. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a 93 year old book in such fine condition.

Almost the first think I saw on entering the fair (apart from a Great Gatsby at £120,000! Are they mad! You could buy mine & all my contributors entire collections for that) was a copy of Lampedusa’s ‘The Leopard’,1st, jacketed, unsigned, for £550. Surely I’ve got that in my garage I thought & yes it was there, in even better condition. Oh goodie, I thought, I can sell that & make a few bob. Better check on ABE first. Instant deflation - 20 similar copies mostly under £30. It seems the ABE is still catering for city traders with their ever growing bonuses who presumably don’t care what they pay and are too stupid to check on-line before buying. There was also a 1st impression of Hitchcock’s ‘Stand To’ for £150. No jacket but every copy I’ve ever seen has been the 2nd impression - I was beginning to doubt there was ever a 1st.

5th June

My heart sinks when I find a much sought after work was published by Gollancz. I’m often told by designer friends that these are fine examples of restrained design. No they’re not, they’re terminally boring, denying that basic human love of decoration. The only worse examples I can think of are those interminable series of French paperbacks with their cream covers and red fonts much loved by interior designers. The word is everything, they seem to say, we do not have time for your decorative fripperies! It’s not surprising that this outstanding novel by Pamela Hinkson was rather neglected on first publication, having to wait another 14 years to sell over 100,000 copies when reprinted by Penguin. Hinkson published 2 other War novels under her pseudonym ‘Peter Deane’.

30th May

The only fruit of the June bookfairs so far is this delightful jacket for Donald Mackenzie’s ‘From all the Fronts’, not seen before but there are 2 other copies on ABE. A further example of mis-cataloguing occurred last week. I bought a copy of what is probably the most useful of the Official History volumes - Principal Events 1914 - 1918 - an indispensable guide to what happened when and where throughout the War. Definitely a rare volume, there seemingly being no other copy available unless you search for ‘Principle Events’ in which case one appears - £200 though - I suspect it may have been there for some time!

26th May

Friends have been telling me for ages what a wonderful book Hans Fallada’s (Rudolf Ditzen) book ‘Alone in Berlin’ is. It’s become a bestseller for the author who died in 1947. Remembering the name from the Barry Maurer collection I’ve managed to find this copy of his story of a Berlin family during the first part of the 20th century. His descriptions of the Western Front were not based on personal experience as he was sectioned during the War for killing a friend in a failed suicide attempt. His colourful life also involved fraud, theft and attempting to murder his wife. He also seems to have fallen out with Goebbels who insisted on a re-write of Iron Gustav to show how the Nazis’ brought stability to family life.

20th May 2010

An occasional visit to the Military Parade Bookshop in Marlborough today yielded a few choice items including a further addition to my ever expanding Official History set. Always worth a detour (allow for lengthy lunchtime closure !) he has a copy of ‘Squad’ at a lot less than the ABE prices. Several additions to the Childrens’s annuals & Pictorial bindings pages from Andrew Harrison who also supplied the jacket for the Paravane Adventure in Minesweeping below.

17th May

The UK edition of James Wharton’s ‘Squad’ can be seen below. I’d expected it to differ from the US edition but this is one of those rare cases where the same design, by Wendell Galloway, was used for both. There is a slight difference in the size of the image which can be seen on p.30. If anyone is desperate for a copy there are 2 on ABE at a little over £200 each! That’s some 10x what I paid for mine. It’s worth remembering that many dealers add 15 - 20% on to their prices for their ABE listing to cover the charges so it’s always worth contacting the dealers directly for a lower price.

14th May

I could have sworn I had a copy of Animal War Heroes & that it was on the site but it seems not - probably the first sign that I have too many books! The Hindenburg below is quite an engaging biography & makes one feel quite sorry for the old General - particularly when faced with the Nazis at the end. Have just finished a splendid new book - ‘Drawing Fire’ by Len Smith who served throughout the War and kept a diary peppered with the most accomplished sketches. He seems to have had a fairly hair-raising but mostly enjoyable time when he wasn’t in hospital with numerous bouts of Tonsillitis & Trench Fever.

11th May

The RFC memoir by Philip Arnall shown below should serve as warning to booksellers to check their text before uploading it. Exceedingly scarce in its charming jacket there are 4 copies on ABE without said jacket. However, suspecting that his name might be misspelt phonetically, I searched for Arnell and turned up this sole copy at a very reasonable price. Now what’s the opposite of Caveat Emptor?

4th May

I’m glad to see this 1st of Carroll Carstairs memoir of his time with the 3rd Grenadiers which William Erti has sent in. 30 years ago I saw this book quite often and so passed it by but now it’s become particularly scarce. Also several new images from Fons Oltheten in Holland. My copy of Hell in the Heavens has arrived - the very epitome of a tired copy so I won’t be replacing the existing image. The are several jacketed copies of it on ABE but at outrageous prices- more than I’d care to pay even for ‘Winged Victory’!

1st May

The only books to come my way lately are already on the site from other contributors - Roughanapes, Animal War Heroes & Hell in the Heavens. It seems churlish to replace their images with mine, so I’m reduced to scavenging images from the net. Apart, that is, from ‘Mice in Oxygen’, a play from 1930 set in the trenches which may be the equal of ‘Journey’s End’ but for the fact that it’s largely written in Scottish dialect which has made reading it well nigh impossible!

24th April

I still continue to acquire the Official History - a probably hopeless task as I’m not even half-way there and most of the rest are virtually impossible to find. Still here’s an example of the Naval Operations set in its usual plain text jacket. I’ve made contact with the head of the Bruce Bairnsfather society so expect to see more of his amusing jackets appearing here shortly.

21st April

Only this delightful period jacket by John Farleigh on Osbert Sitwell’s ‘Those were the Days’ to offer today. A novel set in London before, during & after the War it seems to have passed from view these days with little mention of it to be found on the web. The cast make constant reference to the conflict so I may give it a go in the coming weeks.

17th April

Bruce Bairnsfather is only remembered these days as the Artist behind the ‘Old Bill’ cartoons, but in 1916 he published the attached volume of War memoirs ‘Bullets & Billets’. I read it over 20 years ago but still recall it as a most engaging, if somewhat sanitised, memoir of the trenches. Fortunately my small stock of 1:10,000 trench maps provided me with the appropriate one to accompany my reading of the book and his descriptions are such that it’s quite easy to follow exactly his day-to-day movements. My thanks to an attentive viewer of this site who sold me the fine & rather scarce jacketed copy below.

14th April

Back from France. A few jacketed books should be on their way but only vol.5 of the War in the Air and GHQ by GSO awaited me. The later has some kind things to say about Lt. Gen. Travers-Clarke, Haig’s QMG at Montreuil who turns out to be the Great Uncle of a friend of mine in France. The latest B & MC has an interview with Simon Heffer of the Telegraph who sounds off about e-Book readers. I have to say they seem to be the most unnecessary of inventions. Expensive, useless if wet, dependent on batteries & the high cost of e-books. Promoted with their ability to store hundreds of books one has to ask why would anyone not writing a PhD want more than 1 or 2 books at a time.

31st March

6 new books as there may be a brief hiatus in updates. It’s seems to be getting harder to find decent ones lately. Ebay seems to be getting more and more cluttered-up with repeat listings. Presumably it’s free to list unless the book sells so several hopeful sellers put stuff on at inflated prices and then keep re-inserting when they fail to sell. And ABE is getting even worse since being swallowed up by Amazon. I guess the ‘A’ no longer stands for antiquarian as the vast majority of the 110 million books they claim to have would seem to be print-on-demand. These can hardly even be called books at all but merely prospective ones.

25th March

New today, a children’s book and a couple from Babylon Revisited (always lots of War novels on their site). I just bought a copy of 1 of the deluxe Raemaeker volumes, published by the Fine Art Society, on Ebay . No doubt his drawings seemed very hard-hitting during the War but I’m not sure they’ve retained their power today alongside more familiar works by Nash & Nevinson, let alone Otto Dix! It also seems a bit insensitive to have produced such a lavish coffee-table publication whilst men were dying in the mud at the Front.

22nd March

Back from France & ready to tackle another page. A couple of 1930’s seafaring reprints from ‘Klaxon’ (John Graham Bower). Diligent searching has only yielded me a copy of Falkenhayn’s ‘General Headquarter’s’, a plain but scarce early jacket which I’ll put on when it arrives. Ebay has yielded little of late - I wish sellers would list their books in the correct categories - non-fiction is just too vague, there are usually several million of them and life is too short.

16th March

As you can see our little band of veterans has shrunk to just 3 with the recent passing of John Henry Babcock, the last surviving Canadian soldier of the Great War. A sad loss.

10th March

Today I’m beginning my attempt to make the site more HTML compatible by giving each image a searchable title/author. This should mean that should anyone search for a given title in Google images or suchlike then the appropriate picture should appear for that book. This could take several months as I’ve only done p.23 so far and that’s taken an hour! I’ll do each page when a new image goes on it. I’ve tried to do the same for the index below but everything disappeared so will leave that for the moment.

7th March

Have you noticed how rare books seem to be like London buses & come along in pairs? Having sought Von Unruh’s ‘Way of Sacrifice’ for years 2 copies turn up within weeks of each other. Unfortunately I bought the first one which cost twice as much as the later appearance. Also having bought Herbert’s ‘Mons, Anzac & Kut’ with the jacket glued to the front another copy appears on ABE 2 days ago (sold very quickly). Again I hadn’t seen it before. The most startling instance occurred a few years ago - a jacketed copy of Sapper’s ‘Mufti’ not seen before or since came up on ABE only to be followed 3 days later by another copy - in this case the earlier one was 10x cheaper, thank goodness! There must be a secret place where they wait for a partner before venturing out together.

4th March

The A P Herbert below is unfortunately only the US 1st which is scarce but not nearly as rare as the UK ed. which I’ve never seen. (Maggs has a jacketless copy for £185 at the moment). It came from Royal Books in Baltimore who kindly included their latest catalogue. In it are 2 books by one Jim Thompson?? which can be yours for a mere $80,000! That’s just 1000 times more than they charged me for the Herbert. I think I’ll stick with the War! I’ve also just acquired the latest Kipling bibliography by David Richards. I’ve long been a Kipling collector and this has extensive listings of his Great War output. Unfortunately half of the book is on CD, including all the pictures. Presumably this was to save on costs but as the book is £125 they haven’t succeeded. Some of the illustrations show the most appalling copies, even my modest holdings could have improved on them.

27th February

A batch of European works that feature in Hager & Taylor’s 20 most significant novels of the Great War in their book ‘The Novels of World War 1 : An annotated bibliography’. I’ve appended their list to my Top 20 memoirs page. All this comes from my new high spec pc with Windows 7 which I was told wouldn’t run the old software but which so far it’s doing very well - if only I could remember all those myriad passwords!!

24th February

The US edition of the D. H. Lawrence novel ‘Kangaroo’ was supposed to go with the UK 1st which I’d bought on Ebay. Unfortunately neither the book nor a refund of my money ever arrived & the seller has gone strangely quite. Still that’s the first book ever to have gone awol in some 10 years of buying over the net so I can’t complain. Fabulous image on the Ackerman supplied by Dave Golemon. I’ve also relocated the image of Von Unruh’s ‘Way of Sacrifice’ to it’s correct place on p.29 and with a better image. A lucky find on ABE!

21st February

Firstly a welcome to Dave Golemon from Texas who’s sent in some splendid jacket images which will go up over the next week or so.

I’ve only just found out that one of my favourite bookshops closed over Christmas - Biblion in Gray’s Antique Market in London. A multi-dealer outlet it started in Bloomsbury some years ago & whilst not the cheapest place to buy books there was always the finest of collections on display. At this rate there won’t be many left soon. The web is all well & good but you only find what you’re looking for - no serendipitous buys.

I was about to hit the ‘add to basket’ button when I saw the “Trooper Bluegum” below on ABE only to notice just in time that this is all that is left of the jacket pasted inside the book - how disappointing is that!

18th February

Back from snow-bound France. The Hook below is to go with my newly acquired set of the Merchant Navy vols. of the Official History. Having also bought the reprint of the rare Occupation of the Rhineland vol., it informs me that the series has even more volumes than I’d thought, there being 12 volumes on the History of the Ministry of Munitions which takes the total to 109 (only 63 more to get!) . Does anyone know of a definitive listing? Most online bibliographies miss out some of the series. I’m about to change computers so lets hope this software is compatible with Windows 7!! (The desk pictures have gone to the Stats page)

7th February

The Ebay book finally sold for 4x the price of a similar copy on ABE!!!! Below I append a picture of THIS editors desk - staged? Well just a little. I’m always fascinated by the journey’s made by the books that come my way. A recent set of the Official History - Seaborne Trade has just arrived. Originally sold by a London Bookseller it made it’s way to Stockholm to spend most of its time in a Naval Library there. It then travelled to Frankfort where it acquired another stamp and it’s now made its way back to England. I’m sure there’s a thesis to be written in there somewhere.

3rd February

The only new book from me is the Blunden Anthology below which is surprisingly scarce in its jacket given that 10,000 copies were printed & the jacket is as thick as cardboard. I’m following a book on Ebay which has already been bid up to over twice the price that a couple of similar copies on ABE are selling for?? Most odd. And there are now 4 volumes of the Official History winging their way to me from around the globe. If you think John Marrin’s offerings are rather meagre these days, look back to his catalogue 36 which I just chanced upon again - more desirable books in one place than I’ve seen since, and all I suspect from the previous collection of one of my contributors!

31st January

As a change from adding new books I’ve attached the picture below. It’s supposedly a corner of the editorial office of Peter Scott at the end of his term as editor of that excellent journal of the Western Front Association, ‘Stand To’, taken towards the end of 1986. I was so envious of the treasures displayed that it started me on converting my existing, largely jacketless holdings, into what you see on this site. It’s clearly a very posed shot drawing largely on the holdings of Peter’s employer, Bertram Rota, showing several books that would later end up in their seminal Catalogue 245. I’ve since managed to find jackets for 4 of them - Richards, Edmonds, Rogerson & Mottram but the Rodker & Vol. 3 of the 1917 France & Flanders remain unclothed. I’ll find a permanent place for this photo somewhere on the site.

28th January

The Mesopotamia vol. arrived 2 days ago - so much for their estimate. Now can anyone now find me the last volume of the set? I see the new Turner Donovan catalogue has the Seaborne Trade set of the Official History. Can’t decide wether to carry on collecting them or not - there are some 97 volumes of the whole series, some exceedingly rare, and I can’t say I ever read them - but then that’s not the point is it?

22nd January

Most of my new arrivals are duplicates of books already on-site. A nice copy of Benn’s’ In the Side Shows’ from ebay but without jacket. I’ve ordered a volume of the Official History from the US and went for the cheaper postal option - it’s on it’s way, estimated delivery date May 28th!! How on earth can a book from the States take so long - deliberately delaying it for that length of time must cost more than sending it airmail. Perhaps they’re waiting for the North-West passage to be free of ice!

14th January

Melting at last & the postman’s been - hallelujah! 3 books from Babylon Revisited.

12th January

Another batch as the snow doesn’t seem to be abating and the postman has not been seen in a week. I think Seaford post office must be full of Great War books for me at the moment.

5th January 2010

Masses of new books to add so it’s just as well we’re all snowed in for the foreseeable future. I see the bookseller Peter Harrington is single-handedly trying to elevate the prices of War books. His latest list has a copy of Sapper’s ‘Sgt. Michael Cassidy’ for an eye-watering £1500. Of Sapper’s 6 War books this is probably the least scarce in it’s jacket, I can recall seeing some 4 copies in the last 5 years, so God knows what he’d ask for the others. And there was I hoping to pick up Men, Women & Guns or The Human Touch for £50 each. Mind you he obviously makes a comfortable living - he lists the supposedly inscribed copy of Austen’s ‘Emma’ for £325,000 which I remember passed through Bonham’s about a year ago for £180,000. I suspect the jacketed copy of Jacomb’s ‘Torment’ below is scarcer.

27th & 29th December

Bloated with too much turkey and Agatha Christie repeats it’s time to add a few more gems from the Vergette-Whitehorn collection.

23rd December

A splendid Christmas present in the form of a whole batch of new images from the Vergette-Whitehorn collection. I shall be putting them on in dribs & drabs over the next few weeks. Which will go someway to make up for the slight disappointment that the V & A will let me photograph their dust jacket collection but not put them on the site without extensive permissions - I’ll address that in the new year.

17th December

Having just finished ‘The Last Veteran’ I was made aware of some startling facts which connect us more closely with distant wars than I’d previously realised. I was 7 years old when the last veteran of the American Civil War died, & only missed by 6 years overlapping with the last survivor of Balaclava. My aunty Mabel, mentioned on the front page, was born in the same year that the last survivors of Waterloo & Trafalgar died! And the last Boer War vet? Well he was around until 1993! Suddenly the Great War seems so much closer.

16th December

Still reading Peter Parker’s excellent book ‘The Last Veteran’ it has reminded me of Dorothy Sayers novel ‘The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club’. More than almost any other Golden Age detective novel, the War floods nearly every page. The 2 minutes silence on Armistice day is used to move the body of the murder victim! Sayers herself was well aware of the effects of the War, her husband suffering from delayed trauma as a result of his time at the front. I don’t intend to put many such novels on site otherwise we’d be full of Agatha Christie (Poirot a Belgian War refugee, Hastings invalided back from the Somme) but this I think deserves its place.

The site seems to have been inducted into the Collectors Weekly Hall of Fame (see badge above) a useful guide to collectors on the web.

13th December

The later, Hutchinson, edition of Aubrey Herbert’s memoir comes from the Broad Street Book Centre in Hereford. It’s a scarce book in any condition but the jacket lacks the spine & is glued to the boards. A fine image though.

9th December

Little to add lately apart from the superb jacket shown below on Margaret Skelton’s scarce anti-war novel ‘Below the Watchtowers’ from 1926. The figure holding the sword of Damocles over the decadent throng below could have come straight from a Doctor Strange Marvel comic of the 1960s. It concerns 2 groups of English & German students separated by the War.

1st December 2009

Having found myself a copy of Matthew’s ‘Cornwall Territorials’ it made me think about the survival of some books. This was an expensive volume, 25/-. Given that the average novel cost 6/- in 1921 that makes it equivalent to £60 - 70 today. It can hardly have sold many outside of libraries and yet there are 6 copies on ABE whereas many of the popular novels of the time selling in vastly larger quantities are virtually unobtainable. The vagaries of survival!

25th November

I’m in the throws of what may be Swine Flu but is probably just a common cold so only a paltry offering of new things. Thanks to Tom Donovan for giving me the superb image from ‘Woman Under Fire’ cut from the original jacket. And thanks also to Book & Magazine Collector for mentioning me again in their Christmas issue. Still waiting to hear from the V & A as to wether they’ll let me photograph the British Library Dust Jacket archive covering the inter-war years.

19th November

A superb series of letters from a flyer in the Royal Naval Air Service. Some of the best descriptions of flying I’ve come across particularly for a volume published during the war. I’m reading Peter Parker’s ‘The Last Veteran’ at the moment. An excellent book and with a fine put-down of the tediously po-faced ‘Revisionists’. I never realised that over 30% of the male population aged between 20 & 24 were killed. Still we won in the end so it was all worth it!

18th November

To the new PBFA Military book fair at the notorious Deep Cut Barracks on Sunday. An excellent if remote venue where the highlight was a complete set of the Official History - Medical Services. 11 original and 1 recent rpt. But £1975 so it stayed there! Have also at long last found a signed copy of Anthony Bertram’s ‘The Sword Falls’, the future art historians novel about the devastating effect of the War on a working man’s family. Like every other known copy this was without its jacket. Apparently it was designed by Eric Ravilious but no one has ever seen a copy nor are there any sketches in the Ravilious archives. Remarkable for a book published at the height of the War boom in 1929 and mentioned by Cyril Falls. The Holy Grail for this collector!

13th November 2009

Reading a short story in the Sapper collection below (see Sapper page) I was surprised to read of a strangely modern occurrence. Our clubland hero has parked his car in St. James Sq. but has to leave his dinner engagement early to move it. Apparently parking is limited to 2 hrs so he has to drive it to Waterloo Place otherwise he risks a fine. And this was written in 1927!! I’ll probably read that he gets caught by a speed camera next!

10th November

There seemed to be an emptiness at the Cenotaph this Remembrance Sunday now that the Great War generation has passed away. It was after all built to commemorate that war. I’m extremely thankful that I was there on the 11th November last year when Henry, Harry & Bill made their last appearance. I may go to the Abbey tomorrow for the final service.

Many thanks to George Simmers for digging this rare Arnold Bennett jacket out of the Bodlean Library.

7th November

With the approach of Armistice Day, ABE have produced, with a little help from me, a short guide to the books soldiers were reading in the trenches. See here.

A trip to the Chelsea Book Fair yesterday didn’t yield much, but I noted a copy of Griffith’s ‘Up To Mametz’ inscribed to W.V. Tilsley on John Marrin’s stand - no jacket unfortunately & not cheap at £350. Worth checking some new stock from Peter Harrington on ABE - some 20 jacketed WW1 books which I suspect have come from a collection I’ve seen recently! All rather pricey though!

23rd October 2009

A trip to Canterbury on Wednesday yielded a few books. Long gone are the days when a town’s proximity to a University guaranteed a plentiful supply of secondhand bookshops. Canterbury now has only 2 of note, the Chaucer & the Canterbury, but both are excellent and well-worth a diversion as Michelin would say. I see that this site is now listed by the V & A no less as a source of book-jacket images. Hopefully it will bring some of these pictures to the attention of today’s young designers.

18th October

Sometimes I think there are only about a dozen of us collecting these books. Tom Donovan has had a copy of Lucy’s ‘Devil in the Drum’ for sale for £75 for several months now. Often described as the finest memoir of this or any other war it’s also extremely rare in its original edition - I’ve only seen it 2 or 3 times in the last 30 years - so very few can actually own a copy. Compare it to say Casino Royale, the first Harry Potter or early Agatha Christies’, all of which turn up regularly at auction but still command over £20,000. I know which I’d rather have on my shelves. Perhaps it’s just as well the millionaire collectors have left our field alone otherwise this lot would never have been acquired!

15th October

A batch of children’s novels from that incredibly industrious novelist Percy Westerman on the Children’s novels page - all courtesy of

Stella & Rose’s Books.

12th October

Only a couple of vols. of the satirical Pepysian view of the War to add, vol. 1 being only a 2nd ed. I recall seeing the last vol. some years ago with a colourful jacket. Also Money’s time with the RFC. One of our contributors is at present with the troops in Afghanistan so our thoughts go out to him for his safe return.

5th October

A batch of new additions are on their way once I have the relevant publishing details, meanwhile a small batch from the internet to be going on with. Just read a nicely illustrated book on children’s war artists ‘When the Comics went to War’ by Adam Riches. Highly recommended.

25th September 2009

I’ve just returned from a most moving ceremony to open the restored Lunette Battery, a Victorian Gun emplacement below Newhaven Fort. For any of you who are down this way and don’t know the Fort I can highly recommend a visit. For a small local museum the quality of the displays is outstanding with particularly fine pieces on the Great War & the Home Front in WW2. Open March till the end of October.

23rd September

Nothing fresh from me at the moment, the 3 new books below were all gleaned from ABE with apologies. I did pick up an interesting Rifleman’s guide to building trenches from Ebay. At over 250 pages I was surprised to find that so much could be written on the subject. With useful data on how much digging should be expected from each soldier - apparently the amount of soil shifted falls off dramatically after 8 hours! Plus a table to show the depth of penetration of a rifle bullet in different materials - some 5ft. In clay!

14th September 2009

If I read one more newspaper article saying that the last veteran of the War has died I shall go mad. Claude Choules is STILL alive - he fought at Jutland. Just because it was at sea doesn’t make his contribution any less worthy of remembrance and because he has lived in Australia for most of his life doesn’t expunge his service in the Royal Navy. Lets celebrate this man’s life while he’s still with us!

10th September 2009

3 new jackets for Sapper’s books - only the non-war ‘Bulldog Drummond at Bay’ is a 1st. I often ask myself why I collect Sapper - even his biographer, Richard Usborne, doesn’t have anything nice to say about him. The aforementioned ‘Drummond at Bay’ although written as late as 1935 under the spectre of the Nazis is still as xenophobic & anti-Semitic as the earlier ones. And as for Drummond & his cronies - they’re little better than heavyweight thugs. I tell myself it’s just for the jackets!

7th September

Several new images from Fons Oltheten who continues to publish Dutch translations of WW1 titles as can be seen on his website -

Dulce-et-Decorum

6th September 2009

Back from a long break in France. Several books here when I returned but most were on the site already - Hutchison’s ‘Warrior’, A variant ‘All Quiet’ which turned out to be published in 1952 & not the 1929 as advertised (I think {Putnam stopped updating the publishing details as the years passed) and a nice 4th ed. of Joe Maxwell’s ‘Hell’s Bells’, same jacket as 5th ed. Some rare Sappers on the way - more when they arrive. An email from Dean Echenberg who points me in the direction of his website of War Poetry.

25th August 2009

A few new additions but nothing more for the next few days. Many books are on their way to me from the far flung corners of the old Empire but the vagaries of the international postal system mean books from Canada take at least 6 weeks by air - perhaps that means by balloon!

21st August 2009

I’ve put in a new page for Erich Maria Remarque - just the 3 novels dealing with the War - German, UK & US 1sts with some contemporary reprints. It makes the previous page a little less crowded. Prompted my the arrival of the William Kermode jacket from Ebay on a 1931 reprint.

20th August 2009

A whole batch of jackets from a new contributor, Roger Joye. That still means that over the last two and a half years I’ve only heard from some 30 or so fellow collectors. There must surely be lots more of you out there with some interesting material. If you’re still thinking that the pictures are used for some nefarious purpose please be re-assured that the site is for information only.

18th August 2009

Came across this set of Lord Beaverbrook’s history of the Canadian Expeditionary Force on Ebay. Not a very good picture unfortunately but seeing all 3 vols. together is unusual, vol.3 being rather scarce. I shan’t be buying it however - £795 seems a trifle steep!!

17th August 2009

As you can see my attempt to add a second counter has placed it over some existing text. Moving it has so far defeated me so I may be forced to remove it. Came across yet another jacket for the early UK issue of Remarque’s ‘All Quiet’. It’s supposed to be the same year as the 1st but I won’t receive it for several weeks so can’t check yet.

14th August 2009

A rather tatty copy of Tank Commander Mitchell’s ‘Tank Warfare’ came today. He was in charge of the first English tank to meet a German one in single combat. At first I thought the book was meant for a young audience but it’s just his plain style. Full of interesting tank lore. I’ve put a new counter on this page as I assume most regulars have this page bookmarked.

12th August 2009

3 more books from Tom Donovan’s collection. I was looking at his copy of ‘One Mole Rampant’, that rare tunneling memoir which must be one of the most sought after books amongst WW1 collectors. Issued in a private edition of only 300 copies I’m wondering if it ever had a jacket. Tom’s copy looks so bright I’m sure it must have done. Worth going to George Simmers Great War Fiction blog to see his rendition from the Trafalgar Square plinth of a new 1000 line poem.

10th August 2009

A milestone reached - 10,000 hits, but it’s taken over 2 years! Perhaps there aren’t that many of us collecting these books. Strange really when you think that the Great War produced some of the most powerful literature of the 20th Century. There are probably 100 collectors of Stephen King or P G Wodehouse to every 1 of us. Maybe I need to sprinkle names like Michael Jackson or Paris Hilton around the site to increase the hit rate!! Have added a new page for Australian Pictorial bindings (mostly thanks to Nick Fletcher). See below.

7th August 2009

A few more books from Tom Donovan’s Collection. If you’re interested in a definitive history of the Indian Cavalry Regiments he has several copies of a new work on the subject.

6th August 2009

A fascinating little pamphlet from Ebay this morning ‘Tricks for the Trenches’ published in 1915. They mostly involve matches & coins with a few card tricks. I’m trying to picture the average Tommy, knee deep in mud and dodging the whizzbangs trying to lay out a few dry matches on an upturned crate to do these tricks! On the day of Harry Patch’s funeral I wonder what he would have made of them.

26th July 2009

Broadcasting House on Radio 4 this morning brought in Jay Winter to speak about the passing of Harry Patch. Barely mentioning the last Tommy, Winter used his time to promote the revisionist agenda. He trotted out the usual line about most of the memoirs being written by Officers and so were not really representative of the actual mood of the troops. This has always seemed to me to be a fallacious argument. Admittedly they were better educated and so more able to express in print their true feelings, but their sensibilities would have been the same as their men. Given that their generally elevated financial positions would have to some extent buffered them from the effects of the depression of the late 20’s, one would have expected them to be less disillusioned than the common soldier! Perhaps if more Tommies had written their memoirs the revisionists would see things differently. Harry Patch was never in any doubt about the awfulness of War!

25th July 2009.

And now Harry Patch has gone. All three men who were at the Cenotaph last November have passed away this year. Hopefully a National memorial service will swiftly be arranged - it’s the least the Government can do.

An excellent new book on dust jackets has recently been published - Faber & Faber : Eighty Years of Book Cover Design by Joseph Connolly. Faber 2009. Whilst only covering the output of a single publisher it shows a wonderfully varied selection of jackets. Only 2 are Great War related but as one of those is Lucy’s ‘Devil in the Drum’ I’m not complaining - and I thought I had the only copy!

I must once again express my thanks to Tom Donovan who has allowed me to photograph some more of his excellent collection - they’ll be appearing over the next week or so.