Home / Browse / Military & Naval / Reaching for the Stars.
WALN, Nora.
Reaching for the Stars.
First edition, unknown impression due to a newspaper clipping being mounted on the imprint page. Bookplate with the arms of of Field Marshal Montgomery, with its crusader and "Desert Rat" supporters, to the front pastedown, and bizarre gift inscription dated September 1945 mounted on the title page; "To Field Marshal C in C, Sir Bernard Montgomery … a work "Reaching for the Stars", both interesting and informative. From an unknown admirer of his triumphant Military Leadership on the Field of Battle." The clippings and annotations are all relevant, the clippings contemporary to the concluding stages of the war and its immediate aftermath, the annotations are in the main quotations from philosophers - including Confucius, Goethe and Hayek - and statesmen, several being from Churchill. Nora Waln (1895–1964) was a journalist who wrote books based on her experiences living first in China and then in Nazi Germany. A penetrating and unbiased account of life under Hitler, Reaching for the Stars quickly became a bestseller in the UK, with Hugh Walpole writing that it "shows very clearly what can happen to sympathetic and idealistic people who live for a period under a Government that demands the sacrifice of their individuality and spiritual freedom." A really rather odd gift, but one which Monty clearly "accessioned" into his library.
Octavo. Original cream cloth, red faux label to the spine. Somewhat rubbed and soiled, spine lean, toning to the text, a quantity of clippings mounted by, or tipped into the text, extensive pencil and ink marginalia, an interestingly used copy.
