Two volumes of autobiography by the wonderful English historian who, according to Julian Barnes, 'was addicted to walking, but walking in cities; it’s not clear whether he ever drove (his alcohol intake, even if probably no greater than that of the average Frenchman of the period, makes one hope he didn’t); certainly he favoured public transport, with its opportunities for eavesdropping and casual observation. He was in no way a snob - a spell in the British army, he claimed, divested him of class - except in the sense that he tended not to give the middle and upper classes the benefit of the doubt (History, you could say, had already given them that.)' Beginning in Tunbridge Wells during the 1920s and 1930s, then starting again, before looking back, at the Gare Saint-Lazare in the spring of 1950; both volumes inscribed by the author to the same person in the year of publication; laid in is a typed list of inaccuracies and errors in the text (2pp.), presumably by the recipient of the inscriptions who appears as an idiosyncratic and demanding reader as Richard Cobb himself.
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