England is my Village - John Llewellyn Rhys - 1st Edition

John Llewelyn Rees was born on 7 May 1911, got his pilot’s license on 4 July 1934, and was killed in a flying accident on 5 August 1940 whilst serving in the RAF with Bomber Command. Those bare life events hardly stand out among the airminded young men of his generation. But as well as flying, Rees wrote (albeit as John Llewelyn Rhys). His two novels, The Flying Shadow (1936) and The World Owes Me a Living (1939), and a handful of short stories, collected as England is My Village (1941), are suffused with a love of flying in all its pleasures and perils. It’s because of this that he bears some comparison as the English-language equivalent of the slightly older Frenchman Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
 
This is the extremely rare, (IWM exhibited copy only other one known) Right Book Club first edition hardback with a preface by Jane Oliver (author's wife), 1941, in an unclipped jacket. In overall good-to-very good used condition with minor signs of age, handling and storage - dust jacket rubbed and creased to edges with a couple of small nicks (now protected); boards generally clean and crisp. Binding tight and appears little read. Internally clean, no annotation or inscriptions - ownership label to front endpaper; light toning to page-ends but text bright and clear throughout.
 
This is a WW2 antiquarian book collector's dream. An absolute must have for any WW2 book collector seeking tomes written by pilots and aircrew who did not survive the war. This is one of the absolute rarest.