FREDDIE

[A. J. Ayer [Sir Alfred Jules ‘Freddie’ Ayer], logical positivist philosopher, Wykeham Professorship in Logic at Oxford.] Three Typed Letters Signed to Philip Dosse of Hansom Books, regarding review work for ‘Books and Bookmen’.

Author: 
A. J. Ayer [Sir Alfred Jules ‘Freddie’ Ayer] (1910-1989), logical positivist philosopher, Wykeham Professorship in Logic at Oxford [Philip Dosse (c.1924-1980), proprietor of ‘Books and Bookmen']
Ayer
Publication details: 
4 February, 18 April and 18 October 1974. All three on letterhead of 10 Regents Park Terrace, London NW1.
£250.00
Ayer

See Richard Wollheim’s appreciative entry on Ayer in the Oxford DNB. From the archives of Philip Dosse, proprietor of Hansom Books, publisher of the ‘Seven Arts’ group of magazines, including ‘Books and Bookmen’ and ‘Plays and Players’. See ‘Death of a Bookman’ by the novelist Sally Emerson (editor of ‘Books and Bookmen’ at the time of Dosse’s suicide), in Standpoint magazine, October 2018. The three items are each 1p, small 4to. All three in good condition, each folded twice. All three signed ‘A. J. Ayer’, with typed name beneath, ‘Sir Alfred Ayer’.

[‘A deliberate attempt was made to overthrow the Government’: Lloyd George’s Chief Whip lays into a Liberal on the eve of the ‘Coupon Election’ following the end of the Great War.] Long Typed Letter Signed from Frederick Guest to W. H. Dickinson.

Author: 
Frederick Edward Guest [Freddie Guest] (1875-1937), politician, sportsman and promoter of aviation, Chief Whip in Lloyd George's Coalition Liberal Party [Sir Willoughby Hyett Dickinson (1859-1943)]
Publication details: 
26 November 1918. On embossed letterhead of 12 Downing Street, S.W.1. [London.]
£150.00

An extraordinary letter, rubbing the nose of a pro-Asquith Liberal in the muck on the eve of his leader Lloyd George’s landslide Coalition victory in the 1918 ‘Coupon Election’. Guest, who was Winston Churchill’s cousin, is described in his entry in the Oxford DNB as a ‘highly controversial’ figure who ‘knew where all the bodies were buried’, a useful attribute for someone who served as the Coalition Chief Whip from 1917 to 1921. The recipient Willoughby Hyett Dickinson (1859-1943), later an influential proponent of the League of Nations, began his career a Liberal MP.

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