TOO CLOSE TO THE SUN: The Life and Times of DENYS FINCH HATTON.

UK,8vo HB+dw/dj,1st edn,2nd imp.[Number string 2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3.] FINE/FINE.No owner inscrptn,and no price-clip to dw/dj.Bright,clean, colour photographic illustrated dw/dj; with negligible shelf- wear and creases to edges and corners - no nicks or tears present.Top+fore-edges bright and clean; contents bright,tight and near pristine.Sharp-cornered,bright,clean,publisher's original plain black cloth boards with bright,crisp,stamped gilt letters to spine/ backstrip and scenic colour photographic endpapers.UK,8vo HB+ dw/ dj,1st edn,2nd imp,xpp+1- 284pp includes introduction,10 chapters,16pp contemporary b/w photographs(41) in 2 blocks of 8pp apiece between pp80/1 and pp192/3 respectively,guide to notes,notes,a select bibliography, acknowlegements,an index; plus [unpaginated] half-title+title pages,a dedication,separate contents+ illus lists/tables,3 b/w maps,Finch Hatton family genealogical tree; plus 4pp blanks at rear. Conservationist,scholar,soldier,white hunter and fabled lover - Denys Finch Hatton was an aristocrat of leonine nonchalance.After a dazzling career at Eton and Oxford he sailed in 1910 for British East Africa - still then the land of the pioneer.There,concluded his obituary in The Times, 'No one who ever met him,whether man or woman,old or young,white or black,failed to come under his spell. . . . He was different from everyone else.He always left an impression of greatness - there is no other word - and aroused interest as no one else could.' 'Too Close to the Sun' is a story of big guns and small planes, princes from England and sultans from Zanzibar,a famous divorce case,a Welsh castle and a Gilbertine priory,marauding lions,syphilis, bankruptcy,self-destruction and the tragedy of the human heart.
Sara Wheeler reveals the truth behind Finch Hatton's love affairs with the glamorous aviatrix Beryl Markham and with Karen Blixen,the Danish coffee-farmer who famously immortalised their romance in her memoir 'Out of Africa'.She tracks her quarry from a dreamlike Edwardian childhood in a Lincolnshire mansion through to the purgatorial battlefields of the East Africa Campaign - one of the last remaining untold stories of the First World War.As with her acclaimed biography of Apsley Cherry-Garrard,she uses a biography to illuminate a generation. An elusive hero in the mythic story of the British settlers in East Africa,Finch Hatton was the open road made flesh.He crashed his Gypsy Moth into the Voi hills in 1931,dying 'as he would have chosen in the open air,amid the wide spaces that he loved, fearless and free to the end'. Please contact rpaxtonden@blueyonder.co.uk ,because of the weight/value of this item,for correct,insured shipping/P+p quotes - particularly ALL overseas buyers - BEFORE ordering through the order page!
** N.B. ALL buyers please note, stocks' actual shipping/P+p costs are adjusted and any difference is refunded, after order's receipt and before the order's despatch, especially if the item(s) are offered either P+p included/FREE. ** N.B. US customers please be aware: US Standard AIRMAIL postage from UK to USA can now cost more than the price of the book! If speed is not of the essence, then Economy rate is recommended - at approx. anything from a 1/3rd to 1/2 of the standard US AIR quote/rate - sometimes arriving sooner than the 42 days - but not always.