Fifty amazing stories of the Great War

[Annied22]

Thank you. I've finished it now and while it hasn't turned out as well as I'd hoped, at least it's a lot better than it was and won't fall apart in a hurry. I wouldn't want my bookbinding skills to be judged on the basis of this book though! I made a couple of silly mistakes, which thankfully I was able to recover, but when you're working with materials that are nearly 100 years old and brittle, that's something you can't afford to do. The camera has been quite kind, so it looks a bit better in the pictures than it does in reality.

What I started out with and what the book looks like now.

Edited 13 August , 2021 by Annied22

[Knotty]

The interesting thing is that the cover of mine, and the end piece is a maroon/red colour, not a blue version, and the title is in gold, not silver. I have 8 of the 20 in the series, all dated 1936, and all are of similar appearance, they were my fathers. 
 

Apologies to those bookbinding experts for not knowing the correct terminology 

Edited 13 August , 2021 by Knotty

[Annied22]

I hadn't realised it was part of a series although I know a little about Odhams. (My main interest is in the Georgian period so 1936 is a bit modern for me.)

When I was trying to find a copy on microfilm I noticed there were some with red bindings, although as the images were only of the front covers, I hadn't realised the colours of the endpapers were different too. I wonder why they varied the colours, especially as they produced a series.  The part of the spine with the title was lost so the one you can see isn't original, I printed it myself on a small hot foil printer I have. I used 22ct gold foil (artificial gold foil hadn't been invented in 1936 and I like to stay in period whenever possible, although I draw the line at boiling up the smelly glue they used in those days), but I can see in the picture that it looks more like silver. I can just see traces of gold on the bottom right of the embossed picture on the front board, so it must originally have been gilded too. It must have looked very smart when it was a brand new book. Sadly thick books like this one don't stand the test of time very well as the heavy book block places too much strain on the boards.

I'm looking forward to dipping into it now it's all back together again.

(Bookbinding is like all crafts, it has its own special vocabulary. No reason why anyone who isn't a bookbinder or perhaps a book dealer would either need or want to know it!)

[seaJane]

I can't recall whether my copy is red or blue as my books are still in store after a fire at our flat. Blue, I think...

[Kimberley John Lindsay]

Dear All,

Poor Lambert!

Kindest regards,

Kim.

[Annied22]

So there could be three different versions - mine is black.

I'm a good way through reading it now and it's certainly an eye opener. Not so much the horrible things that happened (I had a fair idea of at least some of them already), as much as the matter of fact way they're written about. I suppose, that's how you had to deal with it all in those days. (I think it was only in the latter stages of the war that PTSD was even acknowledged, let alone accepted?) I have to confess to skipping some of the stories that are purely centred around the battles, but there's a lot of interesting content.