The Summer of Dunkirk: Epic of Little Boats That Saved the World and Written in Recollection of the Great Miracle, May-June 1940
No. 90 of a numbered edition, limited to 300 copies. [22pp]. Grey cloth-covered board with silver titles on label on front panel. Printed on handmade paper, fore and lower edges deckled. 8vo. Cloth is a little faded and marked, gently rounded at spine tips and corners. Faint spotting on endpapers else internally neat, clean, bright and tight. Two sketches, the latter in poetic form, which first appeared in The Daily Sketch on 3rd and 4th June 1943, reflecting on the rescue of the British Army by the Royal Air Force and Royal Navy from Dunkirk, checking Germany's march towards domination during the second world war. A rare and moving insight written at the very moment of events. Edward Shanks was a leading war poet of the first world war, later turning his hand to other forms of writing, including science fiction. Arthur Bryant (1899-1985) was a prominent and popular historian and columnist; his historiography often built upon an English romantic exceptionalism based upon a sentimental nostalgia for an idealised past. This deluxe edition of these sketches was sold in aid of The Daily Sketch Relief Fund.