THE ENGLISH AT HOME

Bill Brandt
THE ENGLISH AT HOME

Photographs: Bill Brandt

Text: Raymond Mortimer

Publisher: B. T. Batsford Ltd

63 pages

Year: 1936

Comments: Hardcover, 27,7 x 18,6 cm, b&w photographs. First edition, 1936. Cover in fair condition with traces of wear and scratches. Inside in very good condition other than aging. The name of the previous owner is written on the cover page (see picture). Text in English.

"ONE of the pleasures of being Englith is to return to this country after a longish time abroad, especially if you come up the Solent in a liner. After the featureless American plains, the uncomfortable African deserts and the cruel mountains of Asia, the Isle of Wight looks unbelievably green and cosy and neat, like something seen through the wrong end of a field-glass. Then comes Southampton, with policeman and postman looking touchingly Victorian, figures from the Illustrated London News of seventy years ago; and custom-house officials, who may be ruthless but who at least are polite and have clean hands; and having bought a packet of those Virginian cigarettes which you cannot get in Virginia, and Punch, and a cup of stewed station-tea, you subside into your railway-carriage and watch the hedges and steeples and bungalows rush by, murmuring half ironically, half affectionately, a line you learned at your first school-_"This is my own, my native land! ""

(From the book foreword by Raymond Mortimer)