Robert Henrey. A Village in Piccadilly. London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1942.

First London war story, not included as such in the official canon.

Reissued by Dent, 1952, with a Foreword.

Rewritten as part of Madeleine Young Wife (1954, 1960).

Reviewed Irish Independent, December 14 1942, p. 2; Times Literary Supplement, January 16 1943, p. 4; Tatler, January 27 1943, p. 26.

A Village in Piccadilly was reprinted twice in 1943 and once in 1944 and 1946. A sixth impression was issued in 1952 with an added foreword. The later impressions carried a five-line epigraph from an elegy ‘The Twentieth Day’ published in Twentieth Century Psalter, Dent, December 1943) by the book’s dedicatee, the poet and novelist Richard Church. The book ran to 163 pp. Demy 8vo in 1952 (c. 67K words). Sixteen black and white photographic plates were originally grouped together after page fifty-two. In later impressions they were tipped in at irregular intervals through the book, double-sided, with captions referring to specific text pages. According to a reviewer, the first impression had ‘gay, nursery-style street maps’, presumably as end papers, but this printing has not been seen. The jacket for the sixth impression was a scrapbook-style street map of the West End containing black on green title panels, with five black and white snapshots cropped from the inside plates and pasted between the streets, with an extra photograph top right apparently showing Bob and Mé doing their shopping at 5 Shepherd Market, Mr Hayward’s greengrocery.