Persona Grata

Cecil Beaton & Kenneth Tynan.

Allan Wingate. London. July 1954. Second impression. First published in 1953. Hardback, large octavo; light-blue cloth-bound boards, with silver decoration to front board and title to spine, dust jacket. 99 pages. Many b&w photographs on hors texte plates, and decorative letters and text illustrations. English. 245 x 185mm. 0.7kg. . Very good, in very good dust jacket; slight shelf wear to jacket, spotting to jacket flaps and verso, slight toning to spine; light uneven toning to boards, light spotting and offsetting to prelims and edges.

The world's greatest photographer and the 'enfant prodigue' of our dramatic critics have, in this beautifully designed book, joined forces to produce an anthology of unique human beings: a portrait gallery, in words and photographs, of about 100 living people whom they, its self-appointed curators, both admire…'
 
An amusing alphabetical anthology of 100 living people admired by the two contributors. Cecil Beaton provided the photographs and book design, including the dust jacket; Kenneth Tynan, the theatre critic, provided the text. Under B there is John Betjeman, Richard Burton, Balenciaga and Francis Bacon, G hosts Greta Garbo, Judy Garland and John Gielgud, whilst S features Edith, Osbert and Sacheverell Sitwell.