[Cecil Beaton]
‘Hypnotized by her beckoning finger, I sleep-walked from the wings into the amber glare of lights and shook Madame President’s hand. The microphone loomed at me like a cobra.
“It gives me great pleasure…”’
In the winter of 1952-3 and for six weeks in 1954 Beaton completed two lecture tours of America, combating his nerves and delivering his speech to a string of Ladies’ Clubs across the continent. It Gives Me Great Pleasure is an account of his adventures on these tours. The book is as much about discovering the people and places of America as it is about the lecture tour itself. Beaton visited many cities, including Detroit, Seattle, Chicago, Grand Rapids, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Houston, New Orleans, Florida, Boston and Montreal in Canada. Each destination had a different hotel, a different audience, a different culture and a different taxi driver. Through his anecdotes and stories Beaton explores the individuality of the different States and revels in the vastness of the America experience.
Cecil Beaton. John Day Company. New York. 1956. First American edition. First published in UK in 1955. Hardback, octavo; green cloth-bound hardback with gilt title to spine, dust jacket. 214 pages. Decorative title-page, head- and tail-pieces and line-drawings within the text. English. 210 x 145mm. 0.45kg. . Near fine, in very good dust jacket; light shelf wear to jacket, some rubbing to edges, wear to top forecorners and head of spine, slight toning and soiling to white spine and rear panel, not price-clipped; traces of paper-clip indentations to prelims.
