BLEDGRAVE HALL. By J.K. Stanford. Illustrated by A.M. Hughes.

(1949) 1950 1st UK edition. 8vo (160 x 220mm). Pp75. B/w illustrations by A.M.Hughes, end-paper maps. Green cloth, spine titled in gilt.

Another post-war countryside novel from Colonel Stanford. The ex prisoner-of-war hero protects rare nesting avocets from the evil oologists. First published a year earlier in America as "The awl-birds". "When I first wrote this story in December 1947, as a result of my experience of avocets breeding in Suffolk that summer, what is called in military circles 'concealment for security reasons' was still paramount. So that it was necessary to suggest, as I did, that the action took place in Norfolk in 1946. Only two years later did I ascertain from local watchers that a pair of avocets had, in fact, attempted to breed in Norfolk in that year, and that their eggs had been taken by a collector on the ground that they were 'deserted'. The reasons of secrecy which I have mentioned are no longer so cogent as they were in 1947.. ..It is no longer a secret that in 1947 eight young avocets were reared from the four nests found on the Minsmere Level."