BROPHY, John. And Eric KENNINGTON [artist]. Britain's Home Guard.
BROPHY, John. And Eric KENNINGTON [artist]. Britain's Home Guard. George G Harrap & Company Ltd, London, 1945.
8vo. Original red cloth with illustrated dust jacket; pp. 48, 19 full colour plates; dust jacket a little rubbed around edges, light spotting to text, otherwise very good.
First edition, a copy from the artist's estate. The Home Guard, or "Local Defence Volunteers", was operational from 1940-1944, comprising of around 1.5 million local volunteers otherwise considered unfit for military service. Eric Kennington took this as inspiration for a set of illustrations that would come to complement this edition of 'Britain's Home Guard'. Well known war artist and sculptor, he produced several notable public works of art including the Soissons Memorial and work in the crypt of St Paul's cathedral. In addition, he provided several illustrations for T.E Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom for which he was the art editor. In this work, he returned to his roots as a portrait artist, through which Darracot and Loftus describe him as an "admirer of the heroism of ordinary men and women".