Winged Squadrons

[Cecil Beaton]


Beaton spent much of 1941 travelling around the country visiting air stations. His brief was to take photographs of the R.A.F. and Fleet Air Arm bases and to provide propaganda in words and pictures for the Ministry of Information. Having gathered hundreds of photos and recorded numerous impressions in his diary he was authorised to write a book dedicated to the subject. The result is Winged Squadrons, an up-to-the-minute, fly-on-the-wall account of the lives of the airmen, their training and their military missions. Beaton's images of aircraft and military operations sit alongside perceptive portraits of the airmen. The book bears the Book Production War Economy Standard mark and is printed on economy grade paper. It is bound in printed wrappers rather than cloth and the dust jacket repeats the wrapper design. It’s fragile nature means copies with the dust jacket are scarce.


Cecil Beaton. Hutchinson & Co. London. [1942]. First edition. Paperback, small quarto; illustrated wrappers, matching dust jacket. 48 pages. 67 hors-texte b&w photographs. English. 250 x 190mm. 0.25kg. . Very good, in very good dust jacket; the fragile dust jacket remains in very good condition for its age, wear to spine ends, forecorners and edges with some small nicks, rubbing to folds, light soiling to spine and rear wrapper, not price-clipped; slightly bumped to forecorners, front inner hinge being to crack, no inscriptions.