My Royal Past By Baronness von Bulop as told to Cecil Beaton

Cecil Beaton.

Weidenfeld and Nicolson. London. 1960. Second, revised edition. First published in 1939. Hardback, octavo; purple cloth-bound boards, dust jacket. xiv, 105 pages. Several hors-texte black and white photographic plates, text illustrations and facsimile annotations to text. English. 220 x 150mm. 0.4kg. . Very good, in very good dust jacket; light shelf wear jacket, light ruffling to head and base of spine, small area of loss to rear top edge of jacket, lamination of jacket beginning to crinkle, not price-clipped; boards lightly rubbed to top and bottom edges; no inscriptions.

A reprint of My Royal Past, the spoof memoirs of Baroness Von Bülop, first published by Beaton in 1939. l memoirs of Middle Europe's aged minor royals. The book is an amusing mix of words, drawings and photographs. The memoir is set during the early years of the twentieth-century and allowed Beaton to indulge to the full his love of Edwardian costume. Tony Gandarillas gamely dressed up as the Baroness and Tilly Losch was cast as the beautiful Aunt. Frederick Ashton, Bébé Bérard, Lady Bridget Parsons, Francis Rose, John Sutro, David Herbert, Osbert Lancaster and Lord Berners were all enlisted to dress up in lace and feathers to pose for the photo montages. The reissued book carries the same text as the original but is more compact in size and features an adapted mix of drawings and photographs.