[no siginficant wear to book, light spotting/foxing to edges of text block, one-time owner's name on ffep; jacket lightly rubbed, with faint soiling]. Letters home from a Royal Flying Corps staff officer stationed on the Western Front during World War I -- eccentric, whimsical, and sometimes just plain weird, written as "a civilising distraction from the mental and physical discomforts of the war, written to someone who may have missed a good deal of the subtleties, but who has done us all the favour of fostering the flow." (This someone, Lady Juliet Duff, is described in the book's introduction as "not an obviously appropriate recipient for epistolary fireworks....not even clever or well-educated....although she hid her ignorance quite amiably behind a wall of vagueness. [Ouch.] Nor was she accounted much of a beauty by her contemporaries, though both Baring and [Hillaire] Belloc thought her lovely. Her gift was that of sympathy; she was a good listener.") Among the myriad delights presented by these letters is the fact that Baring managed to sign each and every one with a different (made-up) name: Quesnay de Beaurepaire, Edwin Clayhanger, Gorner Grat, Paul not Saint nor Esterhazy nor Herbert, Fana la Tulipe, Rex Poode, Keith of Ravelstone, and on and on in endless inventive profusion.
Title: Dear Animated Bust: Letters to Lady Juliet Duff, France 1915-1918
Edition: First Edition
ISBN Number: 0-85955-086-9
ISBN-13: 9780859550864
Illustrator: Illustrated by (dj design) Humphrey Stone
Location Published: Wilton, Salisbury, U.K., Michael Russell (Publishing) Ltd.: 1981
Binding: Hardcover
Book Condition: Near Fine in Very Good+ dj
Categories: Humor
Seller ID: 20789
Keywords: world war i correspondence humor