INSCRIBED TO EDWARD (TED) ARDIZZONE
The Honorary Consul
Bodley Head, 1973.
First edition. Original green cloth, lettered gilt to the spine, in the printed dustwrapper. Inscribed by Greene for Edward Ardizzone on the front endpaper, "For Ted - in gratitude for the children's books & in memory of Butlins - from Graham." A fine copy in a very good dustwrapper indeed.
Edward Ardizzone illustrated two of Greene's children's books published in the same year as The Honorary Consul, The Little Train and The Little Steam Roller. Their further children's collaborations, The Little Fire Engine and The Little Horse Bus, would be published the following year.
Some years earlier, the pair had absconded to the Clacton Butlin's for what Greene described in Ways Of Escape as "two extraordinary days before we packed secretly and fled from the red blazers of the prefects in the dining halls." They did stay for long enough for Greene to get so overexcited that he "did fall down on the dance floor. That was the depth of my disgrace. I went with Edward Ardizzone and arriving at Clacton we were encouraged when the taxi-driver said 'That brothel!' but it was sadly not a bit like that."
PROVENANCE: Edward Ardizzone (author's presentation inscription); Catherine Ardizzone (her bookplate, designed by her husband, to front pastedown).
Stock ID: 38504
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