A PARTRIDGE YEAR. By Esmond Lynn-Allen and A.W.P. Robertson.

1956 1st edition. 8vo (155 x 220mm). Ppxii,84. B/w photographs. Brown cloth, spine titled in gilt.

"A Partridge Year is the result of a friendship between two people whose interest in the bird are in some respects dissimilar. Esmond Lynn-Allen and A.W.P. Robertson first discussed the possibility of a joint book on the partridge six years ago, and began work immediately. It soon broke down, however, because for every fact that they found they knew about partridges, there were two that they didn't know. Thus began for both of them a period of intensive checking and study, and by the beginning of 1956 the book was finished. It is, as they explain in the foreword, 'neither a comprehensive monograph nor a scientific study', but a week-to-week account of how a partridge spends its life; of its feeding methods in hard weather, of the break-up of coveys into pairs; of its courtship and nesting, and of the fascinating behaviour of the hatch. It is a book that should be in the hands of all lovers of nature. The brilliant photographs, which Commander Robertson took specially for the book, greatly enhance its value."