Home >> Blampied >> Books >> Hodder & Stoughton >>
The Queen's Book of the Red Cross
Another war, another book in aid of a worthy organisation, the Red Cross. This was published in November 1939 during the period called the Phoney War, a period of eight months before the Germans invaded France, Belgium and the Netherlands in May 1940. Within a month they had also occupied the Channel Islands and Blampied, who had chosen to remain in Jersey with his Jewish wife, Marianne, was isolated there for 5 years. The Queen was Mary, wife of King George VI and the present Queen's mother. The text consisted of poems, stories and articles by well-known writers such as John Masefield, T.S. Eliot and Daphne du Maurier, while the artists who provided illustrations are listed separately: William Russell Flint, Frank Brangwyn, Mabel Lucie Atwell and Rex Whistler, who also designed bookplates, but died during the invasion of Normandy in 1944.
Blampied used the illustration, called The Symbol
, for a Christmas card in 1939.
First edition, thus
Bibliography code: HOD-39.1
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Series: none
Year: November, 1939
Format: 8vo
Pages: 255
Binding: pale blue cloth with title in red within a decorated box, the crown of Queen Mary at the top, a red cross below; the title, a red cross and the publisher in red on the spine
Size: 255 x 194 mm
Dust jacket: not by Blampied, portrait of Queen Mary on a blue bachground within scrolls
Internal illustrations: monochrome illustration on an ununumbered page facing page 96 called The Symbol
, signed top left corner, Blampied
Price: 5 shillings
Printing history: none stated
Printed by: Bound by the Leighton-Straker Bookbinding Co. Ltd, in conjunction with Hazell, Watson & Viney Ltd., Wyman & Sons Ltd. and Richard Clay & Co. Ltd
Notes: This is not an illustration for a story, simply a stirring drawing placed within the text.
Image of illustration (click to enlarge)