One of my treasured prints is The Introduction, a wood engraving of two Balinese men introducing fighting cocks to each other, by Tom Chadwick. Tom died at an early age – just 30 – while fighting at El Alamein in the Second World War, but in his short life had managed to engrave images of the highest quality. Trained at Iain Macnab’s Grosvenor School of Modern Art, Chadwick was also a talented painter, and more besides. Julian Francis has made a special study of Chadwick’s life and work, and it forms the first monograph on this unique artist. Few such monographs are as carefully researched as this.

With such a short life and relatively limited body of work, Chadwick’s prints are rarely seen, so it is delightful that most of his best blocks survive in printable condition and are included in the special copies, tipped-onto the page. The text and colour illustrations of this bold book were printed at Northend in Sheffield; it is a square format (give or take 2 mm) and this was chosen carefully to display Chadwick’s work to best advantage.

There were 210 special copies of the book, containing 16 tipped-in engravings printed from the wood.

The 160 standard copies contain reproductions of all the same engravings shown in the special copies, tipped-in in the same way; all copies of the book contain one of Chadwick’s very best engravings – Wayside Laundry – printed from the block, as a frontispiece.

This is one of my finest books, and everything has come together in what seems to me exactly the right way.

This book is no longer available from the Fleece Press.