It is sometimes instructive to judge a book by its cover. Nobody could mistake the E Phillips Oppenheim cover in yesterday’s post for a treatise on bee keeping, unless the protagonists are being stung.
I do not intend to re-post even my juiciest offerings but I do feel able to steer you back in time to one when it’s almost relevant. Last night I dreamt I went to Batsford again – that’s not quite true but I do remember my one and only visit under a darkling sky on the 23rd of November 2004. Ludo asked me shooting at Temple Guiting. It was a mild, cloudy day and 195 pheasants handed in their dinner pail, my Game Book reminds me. Exceptionally I also noted “ Pol Roger and ‘91 Volnay (magnum) for lunch”. It captures Ludo’s generosity, joie de vivre and swagger in front of other guns with more modest picnic beverages.
As Ludo drove back, hurtling along narrow Gloucestershire lanes, I observed we were hugging an estate wall. “Who lives there?” “It’s Batsford, my in-laws lived there at Malcolm House”. To know more, read Memories of Malcolm House.
Oh good, we have arrived at Batsford and AK Wickham (no relation of Bobbie). Brian Batsford was just twenty-one when he produced this striking dust jacket for The Villages of England, published in 1932. Certainly a bit of nepotism: his uncle was chairman of the family firm, founded in 1843 by BT Batsford, and Sir Brian, as he became, succeeded him as chairman of this august publisher. Batsford books are characterised by their high standard of production and, often, exceptional illustrators. I have one in front of me now we can return to when I’ve read it.
Now, as the bishop said to the actress ..