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Had a busy last 2 weekends with going down to Shrewsbury then had a long week end up in Edinburgh , Friday to Monday, last week end but did manage to find quite a few signed books up over the border. Whilst wandering the streets of Edinburgh we came across a tabletop sale in a churchyard in aid of "Christian aid Week". plenty of books to sift through....spent a good hour having a rummage and found about 10 signed copies...quite a few I already have Matthew Pinsent, Terry Waite x 2, Anthony Bourdain, Maureen Lipman and Pamela Stephenson to name a few....the one's I did buy are cracking addition's to my Military and Political collections. Now bearing in mind when we got to Edinburgh last Friday afternoon the Conservatives had an overall majority down here and SNP had almost wiped out the other political parties in Scotland. First book cost £2 and the other 2 were £3 each, Money well spent.
First up is titled " Hippocrates, RN" Memories of a Navel Flying Doctor signed by the late Herbert Ellis, AFC. Cracking inscription to a guy named Archie whih I can almost read.......hardbacked first edition from 1988.
????? is the word I cannot make out ..yet.
Archie,
You (Like Myself) can see this scene from the 2 aspects (medicine and aviation) a) which do you prefer & b) which one should I have done?? [A serious question].
I think I like my ?????????? now though!.
Herbert August 1988.
Surgeon-Commander Herbert Ellis, who has died aged 93, was a naval aviation doctor who conducted experiments on himself and was the inventor of the audible warning “beep”, today commonplace in motor vehicles.
William Herbert Baxter Ellis was born on July 2 1921 in Newcastle, where his great-grandfather had been Lord Mayor; his grandfather had won a gold medal for distance cycling on a penny-farthing, and his father, as a pilot in the Royal Flying Corps, had been shot down and became a prisoner of war. Ellis later recalled that, as a child before the war, he would sit on his mother’s lap in the rear cockpit of a biplane while his father, a co-founder of the Newcastle Aero Club, flew them to a beach in Northumberland, where they would land for a picnic.
Educated at Oundle, Herbert read Medicine at Durham University, and after a spell as a locum GP at Stocksdale in the Tyne valley, he joined the Navy in 1945 as a surgeon-lieutenant.
In 1948 he found himself sharing a cabin at HMS Siskin, the Royal Navy air station at Gosport, with the war veteran Lieutenant (later Rear-Admiral) Ian Robertson, DSC , who was teaching young officers to fly. Robertson took Ellis up for (unauthorised) flying experience in a Tiger Moth. Ellis did not realise that Robertson was actually teaching him to fly, and was astonished when after only a very few hours Robertson climbed out of the aircraft and announced: “Off you go!”
When the Admiralty called for volunteer medical officers to learn to fly officially, Ellis jumped at the opportunity. He joined No 8 Flying Training Course, sombrely noting that of the 33 embryo pilots, 11 failed in the early stages, five died and only three qualified as fully operational pilots.
Ellis loved fast cars, books and travel. In 1997 he published a memoir, Hippocrates, RN, and Why Not Live a Little Longer?, setting out his philosophy of life.
His awards included the AFC (a rare distinction for a doctor of any service) and the Gilbert Blain Medal, presented by the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons to medical officers of the Royal Navy for meritorious service .
Although professing to be terrified of women, Herbert Ellis was married three times: to Margaret Limb, with whom he had a son and a daughter; to Molly Clarke; and, finally, to Jean Gross (née Stanley-Stawell).
Surgeon-Commander Herbert Ellis, born July 2 1921, died October 4 2014.
Next up costing £3 is a hardbacked first edition from 2008 titled " Prezza" My Story; Pulling No Punches signed by Author John Prescott.
John Leslie Prescott, Baron Prescott, (born 31 May 1938) is a British politician who was the Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007. Born in Prestatyn, Wales, he represented Hull East as the Labour Member of Parliament from 1970 to 2010. In the 1994 leadership election, he stood for both Leader and Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, winning election to the latter office. He was appointed Deputy Prime Minister after Labour's victory in the 1997 election, with an expanded brief as Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions.
A former ship's steward and trade union activist, by the 1980s he was presented as the political link to the working class in a Labour Party increasingly led by modernising, middle-class professionals. In his youth he failed the 11-plus entrance examination for grammar school, going on to graduate from Ruskin College and the University of Hull. Prescott also developed a reputation as a key conciliator in the often tense relationship between Prime Minister Tony Blair and Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown.
On 27 June 2007 he resigned as Deputy Prime Minister, coinciding with Blair's resignation as Prime Minister. Following an election within the Labour Party, he was replaced as Deputy Leader by Harriet Harman. Prescott retired as an MP at the 2010 election. On 8 July 2010, he entered the House of Lords as a life peer with the title "Baron Prescott", he is now therefore referred to as Lord Prescott.
Prescott stood as the Labour candidate in the election to be the first Police and Crime Commissioner for Humberside Police,[3] but lost to Conservative Matthew Grove.[4]
On 21 February 2015, it was announced that Prescott would return to politics as a Special Adviser to former Labour Leader, Ed Miliband. Could be out of a job now?
And No 3 and pick of the bunch for me...........Hardbacked first edition from 2010 titled " A Journey " signed by Author Tony Blair, again this was £3.
Anthony Charles Lynton "Tony" Blair (born 6 May 1953)[1][2] is a British Labour Party statesman, who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007. He now runs a consultancy business and performs charitable work. Blair was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007. Blair led Labour to a landslide victory in the 1997 general election, winning 418 seats, the most the party has ever held. The party went on to win two more elections under his leadership: in 2001, in which it won another landslide victory, and in 2005, with a reduced majority.
Blair was elected Labour Party leader in the leadership election of July 1994, following the sudden death of his predecessor, John Smith. Under his leadership, the party used the phrase "New Labour" to distance it from previous Labour policies. Blair declared opposition to the traditional conception of socialism, and declared support for a new conception that he referred to as "social-ism", involving politics that recognised individuals as socially interdependent, and advocated social justice, cohesion, equal worth of each citizen, and equal opportunity.[3] Critics of Blair denounced him for having the Labour Party abandon genuine socialism and accepting capitalism.[4] Supporters, including the party's public opinion pollster Philip Gould, stated that after four consecutive general election defeats, Labour had to demonstrate that it had made a decisive break from its left-wing past, in order to win again.[5]
In May 1997, the Labour Party won a landslide general election victory, the largest in its history, allowing the 43-year-old Blair to become the youngest Prime Minister since Lord Liverpool in 1812. He attained early personal popularity, receiving a 93% public approval rating in September 1997, after his public response to the death of Diana, Princess of Wales.[6][7][8] In the first years of the New Labour government, Blair's government introduced the National Minimum Wage Act, Human Rights Act and Freedom of Information Act, and carried out devolution, establishing the Scottish Parliament, the National Assembly for Wales, and the Northern Ireland Assembly, fulfilling four of the promises in its 1997 manifesto.
Excellent weekend up over the Border, I can recommend Edinburgh to anyone.
