Flaubert’s Dictionary Of Accepted Ideas: Inscribed In Gaelic script By John Betjeman To John Arlott

Barzun, Jacques Translates Flaubert & Betjeman, John

£225.00

SKU FDOAI001001 Categories ,

Product Description

Published by Max Reinhardt, London, UK. Date: 1954. 1st edition. Original cloth. Dustwrapper. Size: 12.7cm x 19.1cm. pp. 84. Inscribed by John Betjeman on the front blank endpaper: ‘To John Arlott from a fellow quill driver of ‘The Stunt’, Sean O’Betjeman’. Betjeman had been the British attache in Dublin during WWII and was considered a spy by the IRA and came very close to being assassinated by them. This assassination was aborted by the IRA army council’s head of civilian intelligence, Diarmuid Brennan, who decided that someone who was as passionate about poetry as Betjeman was should be given the benefit of the doubt. Betjeman had taken Irish classes and wrote fondly of the Irish Nation. The great cricketing commentator, John Arlott, had become a good friend of his and inscribed a number of books to him. Books signed by him in Gaelic script are most uncommon. Binding nice and tight, Occasional slight foxing else a very good indeed, tight, clean copy in very good, slightly nicked, chipped and rubbed dustwrapper. Scarce.