It is another in the series which was published in the 1950s, by the OUP and while it ran to three reprints is unavailable except as a second hand copy.
I first came across it on a rainy day in Edmund Waller school sometime around 1958.
Like the others in the series it is the artwork that marks it as something special.*
Back then the text was a little too dense but the illustrations were bold and colourful.
At the time I have to admit to being unimpressed with that artwork which lacked the realism of illustrations in other history books.
The style is typical of the period, and looking at the buildings and the historical figures is to be reminded of similar illustrations on posters, and adverts in books, magazines and even on those framed pictures you got in train compartments.
A Picture History of France covers the entire history of the country and in keeping with the approach to history which was becoming fashionable breaks from a series of stories of Kings and Queens and widens its story concluding with a survey of France in the 1950s.
I could have chosen any one of the illustrations from its sixty-one pages but fastened on this describing the south.
Pictures; cover of A Picture History of France, and a detail from page 60
* A Picture History of France by Clarke Hutton, 1951, OUP
**A Picture History of Australia, Britain, Canada, Great Discoveries, India, Italy, Russia, The United States of America
No comments:
Post a Comment