[Cecil Beaton]
In 1940 Beaton had begun working for the Ministry of Information. His role as a war photographer stemmed from Kenneth Clark’s wish to create an artistic record of the effects of war. Beaton was able to move around the country visiting towns, cities and the country, as well as military bases and factories, taking thousands of photos of Britain at war. Many of these images were collected into Air of Glory. A Wartime Scrapbook, published by the Ministry of Information in the latter half of 1941. The book is filled with photographs showing the human impact of war and the way it effected the life of the individual. There are images of sailors, soldiers, airmen, the land army, evacuees, shipbuilders, factory workers, nurses, Londoners, villagers and children. The captions were created by the writer, and fellow ex-Bright Young Thing, Rosamund Lehmann. Air of Glory bears the hallmarks of a government publication. Paper rationing restrictions are evident on the dust jacket and endpapers, and their fragile nature means that intact copies can be hard to find.
Cecil Beaton. Captions by Rosamond Lehmann. His Majesty's Stationery Office. London. 1941. First edition. Hardback, quarto; red cloth-bound boards, top edge red, dust jacket. 88 pages. Profusely illustrated with black-and-white photographs by Beaton. English. 280 x 215mm. 0.55kg. . Very good, in very good dust jacket; some shelf wear to jacket with some light soiling, a faint area of staining to lower edge of front wrapper, a few small nicks to lower edge, 1cm area of loss to head of spine, not price-clipped; a very good copy with the fragile jacket, clean and fresh internally, binding firm.
