While Douglas Percy Bliss wrote kindly and perceptively several decades ago about his old friend Edward Bawden (for a book published by the Pendomer Press), and earlier in his career took up the pen to write about Eric Ravilious and the emerging engravers of the 1920s, no-one has written comprehensively about Bliss himself, who was a notable engraver, teacher and – especially – landscape painter; the same applies to his wife Phyllis Dodd. Dr Malcolm Yorke has written several fine books for this Press and his study of Bliss, of Phyllis (a fine portrait painter), and of the succeeding generation of artistic Blisses, is another important book. There are books about Bawden and Ravilious, but it is right and appropriate to make the same sort of book about their closest, and highly talented, friend at the Royal College of Art.

It runs to 280 pages and there is an enormous amount of work shown, by both these great artists, with 18 folding tip-ins. There are also tipped-in prints made from four of Douglas’ pre-war wood-engraved blocks, and one by Rosalind Bliss. Douglas’ blocks were almost completely lost after his house was bombed in the war, the suspicion being that they were looted, since some turned up at auction many years later. It was fortunate that a few remained in family hands which could be included here.

Now available at a reduced price of £100 (net) including inland postage (was £282, postage £10).