The Birds Fall Down

London: MacMillan And Company. Very Good in Good dust jacket. 1966. First British ; first. Hard Cover. First British Edition, First Printing. Boards show slight spine lean. Binding sound, corners sharp and inner pages unmarked. Burgundy boards, gilt spine lettering. Dust jacket is price-clipped, small edgetears to front cover, soiling to rear cover. Damaoge now contained within mylar cover. ; 428 pages; Count Nikolai Diakonov, aged and living in exile in Paris at the turn of the past century, has been throughout his life loyal past idolatry to the Tsar, but the Tsar has been tricked into suspecting the Count of treason, and has disgraced him. Travelling by train to visit a relative in Northern France, the Count and his half-English granddaughter are interrupted by a young Russian - a shabby, nervous, gangling intellectual, the son of an old friend of the Count. He is intruding on them because he is a victim of the same sort of mystery that has enraged the Count. During the long journey, illumination comes to them. .