A key early piece of writing by Lawrence of Arabia, which originally appeared in Jesus College Magazine in 1913, and is now published in its own edition for the first time
With an original, hand-printed linocut frontispiece
A strictly limited, never-to-be-reprinted edition of 70 hand-numbered copies for sale
NOW SOLD OUT. MANY THANKS TO ALL THE PEOPLE, FROM AROUND THE WORLD, WHO ORDERED A COPY.
Christopher Nolan directing nearly-Withnail Ken Branagh in Dunkirk.
In what I'm pretty certain is a first, a selection from the soundtrack to Withnail and I has been chosen as a Desert Island Disc. Everybody's favourite future Bond movie director Christopher Nolan includes 'Marwood Walks' as one of his eight pieces of music to be cast away with (other film-related choices include a cue by his colleague Hans Zimmer, and of course a bit of 007).
Nolan says of his choice: "It's just a lovely, lovely piece of score. We first saw [Withnail] at UCL [University College London]. These screenings we would do at the Bloomsbury Theatre, and Emma [Thomas, now his wife and producer] and I would put together all-night film shows once a year, and one year we showed Withnail and I from a 35mm print. It's just a film that I connected with, first on the level that's it's an extremely funny film, but over the years it's sort of taken on a much more emotional, much more melancholic feeling for me. I think a lot of that is to do with this beautiful music."
Hear, hear. 'Marwood Walks' is (I think) the cue heard in the film when Paul McGann emerges from Crow Crag into the daylight the morning after they arrive. Wrapping his overcoat around him for warmth, he looks at the view (which the movie cheats: he 'sees' Haweswater, which is actually miles away from Sleddale Hall).
The incidental music for Withnail, by David Dundas and Rick Wentworth, is, of course, utterly brilliant. It's easy to downplay its part in the overall effect of the film, but for me, I tend to notice it more and more every time I re-watch the film.
But what of the gentlemen who made the music? Both sound fascinating fellows. Rick Wentworth is a BAFTA-nominated composer who has worked with all kinds of interesting people, including Paul McCartney, Grace Jones and Roger Waters. Dundas meanwhile is a mate of Bruce Robinson's, in fact it was his house in Camden in which Robinson and various others lived at the fag end of the 1960s. He is now *Lord* Dundas, if you please, and must be the only current member of the upper house to have had a pop career in the 1970s. Here's a clip of his most famous tune, 'Jeans On'...
The current link to Nolan's Desert programme is HERE. The BBC usually archive DID to be available 'forever', so this famous fan's little tribute to Withnail should be there for future generations to enjoy... even when mankind has to go live on the other side of a wormhole.
This evidently *very* scarce book (I can find no other non-POD copy currently for sale anywhere online) holds a very special place in the history of astronomy, and space exploration. As the Wikipedia article for its author William Leitch points out:
Space historian Robert Godwin published in October 2015 his discovery that Leitch gave the first modern scientific explanation of the potential for space exploration using rockets (1861).[1] He was said to be "a distinguished astronomer, naturalist and mathematician",[2] and his proposal for rocket spaceflight came four decades prior to more well-known proposals by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1903), Robert Esnault-Pelterie (1913), Robert H. Goddard (1914), and Hermann Oberth (1923). Leitch's rocket spaceflight description was first provided in his 1861 essay "A Journey Through Space", which was later published in his book God's Glory in the Heavens (1862).[3] This description correctly attributed rocket thrust to the "internal reaction" (Newton's laws of motion) and correctly identified that rocket thrust is most effective in the vacuum of space.
Despite the title, this is not a 'religious' book, but a still very readable trip around the solar system as it was known then. This copy is in Very Good condition overall, with all 12 plates present (and numerous illustrations in the text). The half leather binding looks of the time, and the bookplate has a story of its own: this book's previous owner was John Whichcord, the lauded architect, perhaps best known for designing the Grand Hotel in Brighton, which, despite the efforts of the IRA, still stands to this day.
A small piece of history then. (Which, perhaps not surprisingly, SOLD before I had a chance to post this blog!)
As is often the case with such lovely books, between me taking these photos and posting them, this book has already sold... but I'll put them up anyway, as a record of the wonderful Rackham-esque illustrations by Charles (Heath) Robinson (brother of William) in this, the first edition of Frances Hodgson Burnett's beloved classic.
On Saturday November 11th it was to London for the signing of THE ART OF HORROR MOVIES: AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY (on which I was Project Manager) at Forbidden Planet in London. Thanks to the book's editor Stephen Jones, I had been invited to sign along with a lot of very august people: writers Anne Billson, Ramsey Campbell, Barry Forshaw, Sir Christopher Frayling, Kim Newman and Jonathan Rigby, artists Steve Crisp, Les Edwards, Graham Humphreys and Uli Meyer, screenwriter and director Sean Hogan, actor and writer Nicholas Burman-Vince, Stephen Jones himself, and special surprise guest Dave McKean. We signed for a full two hours, and a fine time was had by all...
Author and Hellraiser actress Barbie Wilde, who had also pre-signed copies.
It's not every day I find myself sitting next to Dave McKean, so I'm afraid I shamelessly made the best of the situation, and asked him for a sketch on my name sign...
.... a great souvenir of a wonderful day.
At the time of writing, these multi-signed copies are available from FP HERE!
