THE SWORD AND THE PEN Selections From the World's Greatest Military Writings.

First UK edition, first printing. With an autograph letter from the editor, Adrian Liddell Hart, and a response from the publisher, Kenneth Parker, loosely laid in. Original red paper covered boards with black titles to the spine, in dustwrapper. A better than very good copy, the binding square and firm, the foot of the spine very lightly bumped. There is some spotting to the closed text block edge and to the margins of the last few pages, the contents are otherwise clean throughout and without inscriptions or stamps. Complete with the lightly rubbed and creased dustwrapper that is very slightly faded to the spine. Not price-clipped (£6.25 on the front flap).

An anthology of military writing which was initiated by the soldier, military theorist, historian and writer Sir Basil Liddell Hart, and completed by his son Adrian, a soldier and Royal Navy officer, after his death. The autograph letter from Adrian Liddell Hart, dated December 1973, is addressed to Kenneth Parker of Cassell, also a family friend, and explains that the book will soon be published by the American publisher Crowell, and that Liddell Hart is now looking for a British publisher. Curiously, the carbon copy typed response from Parker, dated January 1974, rejects the book on the grounds that it can not be credited solely as Sir Basil Liddell Hart's work, and that anthologies are hard to sell. Evidently there was a change of opinion somewhere along the line at Cassell, as the present volume proves. 'The Sword and the Pen' was originally published in the US in 1976 by Crowell.