"The Splendid Book for Boys" (London, Birn Brothers Ltd, c.1940s). Boys' story book with pictorial board covers and cloth spine, 156pp, measuring approximately 19 x 24.7 x 3.4cm (7.5 x 9.7 x 1.35in). This book, with pictorial covers showing a boy in red shirt and blue shorts traversing a stile in front of another boy holding a bicycle (front and back covers show the same picture, but the title appears on the front only), contains stories by various authors including "Holiday for John" by I. O. Eastwick and "Spies in the Bazaars" by M. Cathcart Borer, with some black and white illustrations plus a colour frontispiece ("Unaware of John and his uncle, the fox stalked his prey"). Several of the stories contain references to the Second World War - for instance, R. Ernest Bailey's story "We Will Return" is subtitled "A Story of Dunkirk", whilst "The Brass Bedstead", by M. Myers, concerns a bed mistakenly collected in a salvage drive by a troop of boy scouts - and thus the book presumably dates from the war years or shortly after. No dustjacket; the cover is discoloured and marked with age wear including bumping to edges and corners, scratches and indentations; there is an indentation to the front endpaper where an old pencilled price has been rubbed out; the pages have discoloured with age, with some marks, occasional creases and slight bumping to edges and corners, whilst one page is torn all the way down towards the spine.
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