Lawrence of Arabia: A newly discovered photograph

It's not every day that a previously unpublished photo of T E Lawrence comes to light; in fact in the decade or more I've been collecting Lawrenciana, I can't remember any turning up (well, apart from one on eBay which turned out not to be him, a fact I know for sure because it was me who bought it and researched it to the extent that I could confirm it wasn't... but that's a story for another day).

Bonhams have this one going under the hammer next week...

From the catalogue:

*****

Photograph album belonging to an airman with No. 1 Squadron of the Australian Flying Corps, serving in the Palestine Campaign during the latter part of the Great War, comprising 24 photographs, the majority taken while stationed with his squadron in November and December 1917 at Gaza and Akaba (Aqaba), including a snapshot of "Major Lawrence, C.B./ Akaba. Dec. '17"; "My D.H.2 67/ Sq. 'Drome 25/11/17. Just previous to 1st scrap"; and "Dead Sea/ '67 Squadron Martinsyde with Guy & Self in B.F. on Bomb Raid. 21/11/17"; other photographs of the album owner's former "Vickers Bullet" (i.e. Vickers F.B.19) at Bela ("My old 'bus"), a SE.5a and Bristol Monoplane (M.1C) of No. 111 Squadron at Belah, Bristol Scouts at Aboukir, etc.,mounted in a small photograph album, minor foxing etc., but overall in good condition, average size of photographs 550 x 1000mm., grey cloth, oblong 8vo, Palestine, Hejaz and Egypt, late 1917

Estimate:

£1,000 - 1,500
€1,200 - 1,700
US$ 1,500 - 2,300

Footnotes

• A PHOTOGRAPH OF LAWRENCE AT THE HEIGHT OF THE ARAB REVOLT, showing him standing full-length, dressed in Arab robes and wearing his famous gold Meccan dagger (acquired by him that July). This photograph – which we believe to be hitherto unknown and was presumably taken by the anonymous owner of the album – shows Lawrence at a turning point of his life, having established his reputation and that of the Arab Revolt with the capture of Akaba the previous June; while at the same time having escaped from Turkish torture and custody at Deraa only a few weeks earlier in late November (an episode of course subject to much dispute). He had been appointed Commander of the Bath for his secret reconnaissance expedition into northern Syria that summer. In early December he accompanied Allenby's troops on their triumphal entry into Jerusalem, but was in Akaba in both early and late December (on the third, twenty-fifth and twenty-eighth); his movements being summarised in a letter to his family from Cairo on 14 December 1917: 'Well here I am in Cairo again, for two nights, coming from Akaba via Jerusalem. I was in fortune, getting to Jerusalem just in time for the official entry of General Allenby... I wrote to you last from Azrak, about the time we blew up Jemal Pasha, and let him slip away from us. After that I stayed for ten days or so there, and then rode down to Akaba in 3 days: good going, tell Arnie: none of his old horses would do so much as my old camel. At Akaba I had a few days motoring, prospecting the hills and valleys for a way Eastward for our cars: and then came up to H.Q. to see the authorities and learn the news-to-be. Tomorrow I go off again to Akaba, for a run towards Jauf, if you know where that is".
  
  It is evident that the owner of the this album served with No. 67 Squadron of the Royal Flying Corps: this was, properly speaking, No. 1 Squadron AFC (Australian Flying Corps) but between March 1916 and February 1918 was renamed by the British authorities as No. 67 Squadron RFC, to avoid confusion with No. 1 Squadron RFC. It is the ancestor of No. 1 Squadron of the Royal Australian Air Force and was under the command of Major Richard Williams, 'father' of the RAAF. Other photographs show aircraft from No. 111 Squadron RFC, with which (on the evidence that he flew a Vickers F.B.19) the album's owner may have also served. This squadron had been formed in Palestine in August 1917 and early in 1918 was to hand over some of its planes to the No. 1 Squadron.
• 
  

*****

Fascinating stuff. Though I did email them to point out that they probably didn't mean to say that average size of the photos was a metre high...

I would dearly love to own this photo (and publish a limited edition book all about it), but something tells me it's going to go for a lot more than the upper end of that estimate.

... and here's another newly discovered photo of Lawrence...

UPDATE: The photo at Bonhams sold for £4000, including the Buyer's 20% premium, but not including the 20% VAT on top of that, so that's basically a five grand picture. I wonder if it will ever be seen or heard of again...

Saki Sighting: Another rare dust jacket surfaces online

As any readers of this blog will know, few things tend to make me more giddy than an old Saki dust jacket that I've not seen before.

As a collector of all things H. H. Munro (and if you're not familiar with this writer best known for his Oscar Wilde/P. G. Wodehouse meets The Mighty Boosh short stories, just take 10 minutes to read 'Sredni Vashtar' or  'Tobermory'), I have previously become inordinately excited by the discovery of dust jackets — and rather wonderful pictorial dust jackets by noted artists at that — for Beasts and Super-Beasts and The Unbearable Bassington.

Now a copy of his second novel, the Germans-Invade-England satire (or rather call-to-arms, since it was published in 1913) When William Came, has turned up on ABE, complete with DJ. It's a fourth edition, which at first I dismissed as the first printing of the book in the smaller format, collected edition of Saki's work, all of which have quite scarce, but fairly boring text-only jackets, but now I've seen the photo with the listing, I realise it's a later printing, in blue cloth rather than the original red, of the larger format first edition. The design isn't as eye-catching as the ones previously featured here, but it's nonetheless another exceptionally rare survivor.

My heraldry isn't up to much, but I think that's a nicely apt mash-up of the United Kingdom and German coats of arms.

It's a shame about the extensive chipping and loss to the jacket, and at the £65 it's listed for, it's a little bit rich for me, though it's quite possibly the first and last example of it I'll ever see... decisions, decisions.

Having said that, probably the single most valuable book I own is a first edition of the same novel, signed by the author to the woman he was supposedly going to marry, but that's another story...

A Saki Letter, and an early Lady of Comics

A fly-by post today (apologies for the recent lack, but Things Are Afoot), just to link to an entry on Jot 101, a time-hoovering blog by the Big Cheese of the shop Any Amount of Books in Charing Cross Road. The blog posts interesting snippets from letters, diaries and general ephemera found lurking in books. This entry is about a letter by Hector Hugh Munro, sold back in 2005...

Saki letter to Annie E. Lane ( wife of his  publisher John Lane.) Not dated (July 31st.) About 1906. Sold on a Charing Cross Road catalogue 2005.

On the headed paper of the now vanished Cocoa Tree Club of St James Street in London S.W. Signed 'H.H. Munro.' Munro (ie the genius of the modern English short story 'Saki') thanks Mrs Lane for a book of her writings she had produced in 1905 about women's roles, high society, champagne etc., called 'The Champagne Standard' --'I have been enjoying its contents, which are new to me with the exception of one article which I had read somewhere. Being much out of England I have missed much of current literature...' He adds 'I hope to be able to break in upon your Devonshire fastness when I am down that way...' adding regards to her husband and sometime publisher John Lane (of The Bodley Head.) 2 sides of notepaper about 90 words.

It doesn't say what it sold for, but letters by Saki rarely show up, so I reckon several hundred pounds at least.

As for the book, copies of the rather interesting sounding (it apparently contains a chapter called 'A Plea for Female Architects') The Champagne Standard are readily available on ABE, with even a signed copy lurking in Canada for under $70. Alas, it's not the copy which led to this thank you letter from Saki. It's dedicated to Carolyn Wells, which I'm pretty certain after minimal googling is this Carolyn Wells, a prolific American author and poet who, like Annie E. Lane, was married to a publisher, in her case Hadwin Houghton, of Houghton-Mifflin.

Wells wrote over 170 books, including a bunch of mystery novels starring the 'transcendent detective' Fleming Stone. She also wrote for newspapers, and deserves her place in history alone for being what must be one of the very earliest female 'comic strip' writers. Back in the heyday of Little Nemo in Slumberland, she was writing several strips, including an equally bonkers, though now little remembered strip called Adventures of Lovely Lilly, which as far as I can tell, featured the cherubic Lilly facing down and then beating up a different large animal each week. Here, thanks to Allan Holtz, are two of her adventures, from the New York Herald in June 1907. The rather wonderful art is by G. F. (George Frederick) Kaber.

A Hammer horror collectable, and remembering Anton Diffring's final performance

The Man Who Could Cheat Death, John Sansom, Ace Books, 1959

"What happens when he cannot obtain the necessary gland in time ends in a shocking climax of horror and bestiality."

Blimey.

I've not seen Hammer's The Man Who Cheated Death, but it looks like a cracker (though I assume the film is not as hilariously out of sync as this trailer):

Up this week is a copy of the tie-in novelisation, which is in pretty good nick, with cover art adapted from — it actually looks like it's been repainted, rather than just lifted — the UK quad poster for the film:

It would appear to be a fairly rare book, with just one copy currently on ABE, at £28, and the odd copy turning up on eBay now and again. I'd imagine it's of appeal to Hammer collectors only these days, and to be fair even they do not revere it as a lost classic. (The film many Hammer fans do regard as the best of the studio's vast output is The Brides of Dracula, which does not even star the iconic Christopher Lee. Interestingly, Bond fans have long held On Her Majesty's Secret Service to be the best of the series, even though it features a far from iconic Australian ex chocolate carrier as 007. This is an example of something, I expect.)

The titular death-cheater is played by Anton Diffring, who worked a few times for Hammer, including in this busted TV pilot for a series to be called Tales of Frankenstein, but he's best remembered for playing Nazi officers in countless films — this one being probably the best loved ("Broadsword calling Danny Boy" etc).

Diffring's final role was playing an old Nazi (natch) in the 1988 Sylvester McCoy Doctor Who adventure 'Silver Nemesis'. The story, which mixed neo-Nazis with Cybermen, dark Time Lord secrets and, um, jazz saxophonist Courtney Pine, was a lot of fun, but utterly incomprehensible, and has latterly become known amongst Whovians as 'Silly Nemesis'.

Diffring reportedly had no idea what was going on in the plot, or what his character was supposed to be trying to do (but then, frankly, neither did the scriptwriter). Apparently he only took the role because it would bring him to the UK from his home on the continent just in time for Wimbledon, which he then proceeded to watch on the telly any spare moment he got. Bless.

Doctor Who: Pop group manager and Muff snatcher

TV Comic Annual 1969

This week's book is a copy of the TV Comic Annual 1969, which was published, as is the way with annuals, in time for Christmas 1968. It's in pretty good nick, not price clipped, with an ink name and address inside, but no other pen mark. I found this in the flea market in Crystal Palace, and it hasn't come far in 43 years: the original owner was a Nicholas Masterson of 44 Denmark Hill, just up the road. Master Masterson was careful enough to only do the quizzes and puzzles in the book in pencil, which is easily removable (though I like to leave such scribblings as they are).

TV Comic, as its name suggests, featured various tie-in strips and stories every week, and this annual, containing a previously unpublished selection, includes favourites such as Popeye, Basil Brush, Skippy and Ken Dodd's Diddymen, but my potential eBay purchasers will I think be interested in only one of them: Doctor Who.

The Doctor's comic strip adventures began in TV Comic in 1964, and in what has to be a tie-in strip record, they're still running today, albeit in a different title: Doctor Who Magazine. Over the years, many artists and writers have come and gone, and in the late 70s/early 80s several of the people who would go on to define the modern comics era did some of their earliest work on the strip or its spin-offs, including both the creators of this rather well known graphic novel.

The history of the strip has inevitably been extensively written up by fans, both online and in print, but the TV Comic stories themselves, aside from the ones that made it into a short lived magazine series several years ago called Classic Comics, have never been properly collected and reprinted. 

Many would argue that's no great loss, as the strip was often very silly, and had little in common with the 'proper' Doctor on the telly. While this is undoubtedly true, the art was often rather lovely. Here's the first page of the first of the two 4-page stories in the annual, 'The Time Museum', drawn by longtime Who strip artist John Canning.

The scripts rarely got sillier than the second Who story in this annual. I'll let the chaps at the fansite Altered Vistas summarise it: 

When the TARDIS materialises beside a road in the year 2208 it causes pop group The Electrodes to crash their tour bus. The Doctor, John and Gillian rush to help them and find none of them seriously hurt, but how can they get to their gig to perform for thousands of their fans in just an hour’s time? The Doctor has the answer and equips them all with rocket packs. They are so impressed they hire him as their manager. They make the gig in time.

Between shows the Doctor learns that they did have a manager before, but he tried to trick them out of their money and threatened their lives when they sacked him. The Doctor, John and Gillian observe the crowd at the final gig and, when the Doctor sees an extra wire leading into the group’s speakers, he realises their ex-manager plans to blow them up on stage. He, John and Gillian swoop down using the rocket packs and lift the band to safety just as their evil ex-manager detonates the speakers. The Doctor then apprehends the villain. After seeing the Electrodes successfully complete a planet-wide tour, the Doctor and his companions depart in the TARDIS. The Electrodes are capable of managing themselves.

Wouldn't you just love to see a TV episode with the same plot? I really would, actually.

One of the panels in this story contains one of the Doctor's best-ever lines, in any medium:

Muff, Fuzz and Snatch? Can the writer of this story, one Roger Noel Cook, really have been utterly oblivious? I think not.

Any upper echelon Whovians reading this post will undoubtedly have a remaining, nagging question. Why is it that Patrick Troughton's Second Doctor is seen fighting a William Hartnell, Tenth Planet-era Cyberman, instead of the sleek new versions he had already encountered on TV?

We'll never know, though it's probably just because John Canning only had photo reference from The Tenth Planet. Regardless, it gives me an excuse to run this, a recent piece by the best artist ever to draw a Tenth Planet style Cyberman, the great Mick McMahon.

For Your Eyes Only, 1st/1st Great Pan edition, 1962 ... and a brief rumination on James Bond film titles UPDATED FOR 2019!

"Urbane savagery" says New York Herald Tribune. That's as good a two-word description of Bond as any I've read.

With Skyfall about to hit cinemas (and already getting rave reviews), this week's book is another Pan edition, though unlike the Goldfinger copy I previously blogged about, this one's a first printing, a 1st/1st of the For Your Eyes Only paperback. It's not mint, and a previous owner decided to tear the bottom corner of page 149/150 off, but it's a solid book for the price I'm asking for it. THIS IS NOW LONG SINCE SOLD.

A quick google of the cover artist, J. Oval, reveals he was actually called Ben Ostrick, and used to live in my old stamping ground, Clapham Common. Here's another of his pulp covers for Pan, as seen on the excellent Pulp International:

No, I'd never heard of it either. Or the movie version.

Though I must have seen a few on the TV, For Your Eyes Only was the first Bond film I saw in the cinema, when it came out. It's actually my favourite of the Roger Moore Bonds for that sentimental reason alone, though it is quite highly regarded by fans, and Moore himself, because after the post-Star Wars silliness of Moonraker, it was a stripped back, quite violent film, with less Moore (s)mugging and a bit more, well, urbane savagery. This scene is about as 'hard' as dear old Sir Rog got in any of his films:

 

... and in case it comes up in a pub quiz, always remember that For Your Eyes Only is the only Bond film to date in which the singer of the theme song (the so-80s it hurts Sheena Easton) appears on screen during the opening credit sequence. Yes, Madonna has a (rubbish) cameo in Die Another Day, but you don't see her on screen singing the (also rubbish) 'feem toon.'

Die Another Day was the second 007 film to have a non-Fleming title seemingly created by a James Bond Film Random Title Generator (an idea so good I had to check whether there was one, and of course, there is), the first being Tomorrow Never Dies. I suppose there's also Connery's 'unofficial' Never Say Never Again, but I always thought that had the requisite slightly bonkers Fleming ring to it. Licence to Kill, Goldeneye and The World is Not Enough are not named after a Bond novel or short story, true, but they have a Fleming connection (the meaning of 'double O', the author's house in Jamaica and Bond's family motto respectively) and are at least cool titles.

Skyfall is another non-Fleming title, and while it's easier to work into the lyrics of a song than Quantum of Solace was (though radio funsters Adam and Joe managed it), it's still verging on bland. The trouble is, there's only a handful of remaining unused Fleming short story titles, and I can't see any of them getting past marketing and onto the poster:

'The Hildebrandt Rarity' (sounds boring, or too German)

'Risico' (sounds like a board game)

'007 in New York' (what, he doesn't go anywhere else for the whole movie?)

'The Property of a Lady' (men won't want to see this movie)

I imagine marketing weren't too keen on Quantum of Solace at first, but probably didn't want to admit they had no idea what it meant, and besides, once they realised they could do this with the '007' on the poster they were happy:

If the producers want to keep it old school Fleming for the title next time around, I agree with the fans who think there's one obvious choice: use Blofeld's alias from You Only Live Twice.

James Bond will return, in... Shatterhand.

2019 UPDATE: IT LOOKS AS IF HE MIGHT, ACCORDING TO THIS ARTICLE IN THE GRAUNIAD, HERE

You wait decades for a rare Saki dust jacket to come along...

The Unbearable Bassington — art by Harry Rountree

There was much excitement on this blog a few weeks ago when I discovered a previously unrecorded dust jacket for a book by one of my favourite authors, H. H. Munro, better known as Saki. As this post lamented, I missed out on buying it, though the seller did send me some photos. The (wonderful) design turned out to be by the noted woodcut artist John Hall Thorpe. 

I'd surmised that this evidently extremely rare jacket must have been included with a later printing of the short story collection in question, Beasts and Super-Beasts, so I decided I'd have a quick look on ABE to see if there might be any of his other books where the reprints had dust jackets too... and yes folks, I found one. In 1924, the final Saki collection, The Square Egg, was published. The first edition came with a plain, text only wrapper (which I have), but I now know that a couple of reprints that came out at the same time — or at least, in the same year — were given pictorial jackets: the Hall Thorpe Beasts and Super-Beasts, and the thing of beauty pictured above, The Unbearable Bassington, featuring an illustration by Harry Rountree.

He certainly looks pretty unbearable, doesn't he?

(Please excuse the reflection on the photos, but the jacket came nicely presented in a mylar protector which would be tricky to take it out of!)

Saki's short stories are rightly more celebrated than his two novels (Bassington and the Germans-invade-England satire, written on the eve of WW1, When William Came), but people are still discovering and enjoying The Unbearable Bassington, and it's hardly been out of print, even as a separate edition, since it was first published in 1912.

The jacket artist Harry Rountree has quite a pedigree it turns out. A New Zealander who came to the UK as a young man (just like Hall Thorpe, except he was Australian), Rountree had a long and distinguished career as an illustrator, as this heartfelt tribute by Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr. reveals. The Bassington jacket was probably just 'another job' for him, but produced to his usual very high standards nevertheless. I love it.  

So when did Rountree paint this piece? Was the illustrated dust jacket only included with the 1924 reprint of Bassington, to give it another 'push', and a little bit more visibility on the shelves? The copy above (and yes, dear reader, I managed to buy this one!) is a 1924 reprint. The novel had already been reprinted in 1912 (3 times) and 1913 (twice). I think it had this dust jacket design from the outset, and I'll tell you why. Look at Harry's signature above. It's hard to see in the photo, but after the last E is a full stop, and then, after that, there's a 12: for the year, surely. So one can assume that somewhere, someone might still have a first/first in dust jacket. I've certainly never heard of one, let alone seen one...

The artist William Stout is a Rountree fan, and appears to have written a book about him, though I can't find any copies for sale; perhaps he's still working on it. I wonder if he's aware of the Bassington jacket?

Also in 1912, Rountree painted the illustrations for the first printing of Conan Doyle's The Lost World, when it was serialised in The Strand. Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr. is lucky enough to own the original of one of them, and here it is, complete with a '12' after his signature.