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An extraordinary survival in the form of the original battlefield order issued to Brigadier Charles Trollope on behalf of Lord Raglan on June 7, 1855, ordering the attack on the Mamelon and the Quarry Pits in front of the Sebastopol Bastion. This successful Anglo-French action proved to be the defining event in Trollope’s military career for which… Read more…

Beautifully executed collection of First World War drawings of aircraft put together by a trainee carpenter with the Royal Flying Corps around 1916. Quick’s work has been marked by an examiner at 97/100 which feels fair for such an appealing manuscript that combines high calibre visual work with careful notes about plane maintenance and repair. As… Read more…

Compelling photographic diary written by an officer with the Royal Army Ordnance Corps who - against all rules - took a camera to the front which allowed him to record the Battle of El Alamein (1942) as well as the chaotic British evacuation from St Nazaire (1940) from where he offers an eye witness account of the sinking of HMS Lancastria with the… Read more…

A quarter century-long correspondence between the poet and art historian Lawrence Binyon and his near-contemporary, the English fin de siecle poet and fellow art historian, Herbert Horne. The collection contains 49 letters and 5 postcards, written between August 5th 1889 and 4 December 1913 by which time Horne was living in Florence. The letters ar… Read more…

Eighty full-page master-plan drawings and written ‘particulars’ for the main navigational device used on all modern ships - the Titanic had four of them - the binnacle. This manuscript was drawn and maintained, and returned under duress to the company for which it was made when the engineer retired. Whiggin was a life-long employee of Heath and Com… Read more…

Rare report on the trial of Henry Fauntleroy who was the last man to hang for forgery in 1824, in the process bankrupting the bank that he defrauded. Henry Fauntleroy (1784-1824), was an acting partner with Marsh, Stracey, Fauntleroy and Graham of Berners Street, London who embezzled money from trust funds by forging client signatures on stock sale… Read more…

Rare true crime account of the trials of Henry Turton and Luke West for a murder in Chatham of a Dragoon from Whitstable and two other men. Quarto format bound in half calf over marbled boards, scuffed to corners. Bookplates of J G Chaplin and William Frederick D'Arley to front pastedown and flyleaf; Edward Barrett Curteis to final pastedown - Whig… Read more…

Inscribed first edition of Rosenberg’s collected poems, a volume which was published after the poet’s death on the western front in the last months of the First World War. As a posthumously published work, there can never be a copy inscribed in the author’s hand, adding to the allure of this volume. Rosenberg’s youngest sister Rachel Lyons, nee Ros… Read more…

The official Book of Hours of Queen Mary I’s reign, the so-called Wayland Primer which has been described by Eamon Duffy as ‘a laboratory for counter-reformation experimentation’, containing as it does traces of Henrician and Edwardian protestant reforms. John Wayland was a religiously conservative printer who received permission in 1553 to print t… Read more…

With an autograph letter from Thesiger tipped on to the first flyleaf. Written on his Tite Street, Chelsea headed paper in May 1987, Thesiger thanks ‘Mr Chance’ for his letter which ‘has finally caught up with. I am so glad my books have given you so much pleasure.’ And Thesiger looks forward to the publication of his next book, The Life of My Choi… Read more…

Two issues of an unrecorded shipboard magazine which was printed in the south Atlantic onboard HMS Carnarvon Castle, an ocean liner which was commissioned as an armed merchant cruiser in 1939. The second of the issues, Vol 3 No 13, December 14th, 1940, was produced in the aftermath of HMS Carnarvon’s five hour running battle with the German cruiser… Read more…

Jacketed first trade edition of Yeats’ late, great collection which includes in its title poem, one of the best loved verses in the language. Deep blue cloth with gilt decoration by Sturge Moore, pleasingly bright to the upper board, a little faded to the spine. A near fine copy with a gift inscription dating from the year of publication to the fir… Read more…

31 pencil and watercolour sketches together with a journal of his tour of the Low Countries produced by one of Queen Victoria’s favourite artists. The Sketchbook and journal of the artist’s travels from Dover (strikingly depicted looking up from the port) via Calais and into the Low Countries contains the source images for paintings that he exhibit… Read more…

Almost unknown - and institutionally unrecorded: a full length memoir written by the artist and writer Emilie Russell Barrington and recalling her decades-long friendship with the preeminent Arts and Crafts designer, potter and friend of William Morris, William de Morgan. In this memoir which she wrote in the final years of her life, Barrington com… Read more…

An ambitious astronomical manuscript made by a young man still under tuition - or even at school - in Scarborough in the late 1770s. PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION Folio sized full vellum binding (32x21cm) with external spine straps; blind double roll to edge of boards; a small square of vellum missing from the head of the spine. The vellum is discoloured bu… Read more…

First edition, first printing of Swift’s first great satire which has the bookplate of the Shakespearean actor David Garrick and is housed in a beautifully made red morocco case and chemise. Although the book is a very good first edition of this important text, there are reasons to be mildly sceptical of the provenance: the edition does not match G… Read more…

First edition of a key philosophical work of the twentieth century by Ludwig Wittgenstein. Philosophical Investigations was published posthumously and is regarded as one of the most influential twentieth century English (and German) language works of philosophy. In its pages Wittgenstein altered many of the positions set out a generation earlier in… Read more…

Three New England genealogical works relating to to the English Hutchinson family which settled in Salem. All three items were published in Boston, Massachusetts in the 1860s, two by Joseph Chester and one by Whitmore. Bound in half black roan over textured cloth boards; marbled endpapers and with the bookplate of the politician and antiquary Phili… Read more…

Superb set owned by Louis XV’s influential mistress, the enlightenment intellectual Madame de Pompadour, with full provenance and de Pompadour’s coat of arms stamped in gilt 84 times. 41 volumes bound in 42 (volume 10 is bound separately in 2 parts), 12mo, Paris, 17x10cm; published 1727-1740. As usual found without the final two posthumously publis… Read more…

A visual diary kept by a British prisoner of war who was captured during the fall of Singapore and interned until the end of the war in the brutal Japanese Prisoner of War system. The sketchbook contains 38 pages of coloured drawings which depict POW life in the Changi Prison Camp (where the artist Ronald Searle was interned at the same time), Heit… Read more…

An exceptionally high-powered album compiled by Ursula Bridgeman (1823-1883) which contains stellar contributions by the intellectual friends that she shared with her archaeologist, politician and diplomat husband. Albert Denison, 1st Baron Londesborough (1805-1860) was the first President of the British Archaeological Association who became enormo… Read more…

Vyvyan Holland’s memoir of ‘a unique life’s experience’, published in the year of his father, Oscar Wilde’s centenary and inscribed here to his personal physician in west London, Dr Wilfred Dykes-Bower. Orange cloth, worn and with stains, a closed tear along the hinge between upper board and spine, now protected by a very good plus supplied dustjac… Read more…

Rare volume from the library at Station X - Bletchley Park - where Alan Turing and a bevy of mathematicians and code-breakers worked in utmost secrecy during the Second World War. Written by the British maritime historian James Williamson, this seems an eminently suitable volume for the library of an organisation which devoted so much effort to bre… Read more…

A singular early nineteenth century letterbook that centres on a polemical essay sent to Thomas Brand, 20th Baron Dacre, on the state of the British nation and the need for multiple reforms, notably parliamentary reform which would be achieved in the Great Reform Act only two years later. To the rear of the volume Dacre’s thoughtful reponse to his… Read more…

Smart copy of the life of Nelson’s friend Admiral William Cornwallis written and inscribed by Winston Churchill’s step-father, a man just 16 days older than his distinguished stepson. The subject of the biography, Admiral Cornwallis, an ancestor of the author, was the brother of the defeated British general at Yorktown, Charles Cornwallis, and hims… Read more…