Rare first edition playscript written by Lady Madeleine Lees with the collaboration of her lover, the maverick imperialist Sir Francis Younghusband, a mere 44 years her senior.
A bound, typescript titled ‘England’s Resurrection’... ‘For Private Circulation’ written by Lady [Madeline] Lees with a concluding chapter by the former imperialist and military adventurer Sir Francis Younghusband. The volume contains evangelical writings throughout chapters I -IV (pp 1-19) followed by The Play titled ‘The Lytchett Minster Nativity Play’ (pp 35- 52) and a concluding chapter titled ‘An Outside Impression’ (pp 56 -59) by Younghusband.
Stiff card boards very good, titled in type to front; endpapers clean, inscribed ‘Edited by [....]’ by hand to front free; light age spotting to endpapers and title page; a little water stained to fore edge throughout but otherwise clean and entirely sound. ‘Copied by Miss M.L. Naish, Parkstone’ stamped to tail of rear free endpaper - presumably the typescript. 59 pp. In very good condition.
A second edition (1943) of this script survives in two institutional copies (BL & Calgary) but there are no institutional examples of this first edition
Lady Madeline Lees of Lytchett Minster near Poole in Dorset is celebrated for her religious revival work, evangelical writings, and her unique community-driven gospel feature films. She strongly believed that cinema was the ultimate modern medium for spreading the Gospel and in the late 1950s, she funded, wrote, and produced major religious films. When Lady Lees was 34 years old, she began a two-year romantic liaison with Sir Francis Younghusband.
Younghusband's biographer Philip French describes him as 'brought up an Evangelical Christian, read his way into Tolstoyan simplicity, experienced a revelatory vision in the mountains of Tibet, toyed with telepathy in Kashmir, proposed a new faith based on virile racial theory, then transformed it into what Bertrand Russell called ‘a religion of atheism’.
