RUDORFF Raymond. War to the Death. The Sieges of Saragossa 1808-1809. London, Hamish Hamilton, [1974].
8vo. Original boards with illustrated dust-wrappers (not price-clipped); pp. x, 278, plates; light fading to spine, previous bookdealer's pencil annotations to endpapers; a very good copy.
First edition, presentation copy. Black ink inscription to the front free endpaper, "For Michael and Jill Foot, with my warmest wishes, Raymond Rudorff, Hampstead - March 10, 1974". Michael Mackintosh Foot (1913-2010), journalist, author and politician, Leader of the Labour Party 1980-83, and lifelong left-wing campaigner, would certainly have been keenly interested in this book detailing the struggles of the simple (Spanish) man and woman against the oppressive might of the French military invaders, at the outset of what proved to be the Spanish Peninsular War, till 1814. The actual incidents of the two sieges tragically mirrored what was to come over a century later during the Spanish Civil War. Foot´s wife, Jill Craigie (1911-1999), was a screenwriter, documentary film-maker and feminist champion, whilst apart from being an author of several books, little is known of the author, Raymond Rudorff (b. 1933, d. 1992).
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