The Last Enemy

Macmillan, 1942. 1st edition. Hardcover. Blue boards in nice condition, gilt spine lettering, two small marks on rear board, original owner's ink name and date of Christmas 1942 on fep, along with a small embossed address and staple mark on first two leaves, pages very clean. Richard Hillary's memoir of life as an RAF pilot before and during World War Two, prior to his death on a night-training flight on 8th January 1943, is one of the classics of aviation literature. The Last Enemy was published a few months before his death, and laid into this particular copy is an article from the Sunday Express, also from January 1943, written a couple of days after Hillary's untimely death, by a reporter who had first met Hillary shortly before the war. The owner's inscription has a certain poignancy about it, being only a couple of weeks before Hillary's death.