ABOUT BRITAIN NO. 4 EAST ANGLIA A NEW GUIDE BOOK WITH PORTRAIT BY R.H. MOTTRAM [From the Library of Eric Hosking]

London: Collins [Sponsored By The Brewers' Society Festival of Britain], 1951. Book. Very Good. Hardcover. First Edition. 8vo. Eric Hosking's photograph of a Bittern found within. 92 pages, a few colour plates and numerous b/w illustrations. Original dust jacket very good, with some general wear and rubbing to edges, lightly chipped to the top of the spine, spine toned, now attractively presented in a loose-fitting clear archival sleeve. Hard-back binding, near fine. Contents clean and tight, compliments slip slipped in, otherwise unmarked no inscriptions. A very good copy with a very good dust jacket. Eric Hosking, OBE, Hon FRPS, FBIPP (1909-1991) was widely acknowledged as one of the world's most eminent natural history photographers, "Perhaps the most famous bird photographer ever to have lived" (Gemma Padley). He was pioneering and developed new techniques, especially the use of flash photography and automatic shutter release technology, which enabled him to photograph birds at night and freeze birds in flight for the first time. Famously, when just 28 he lost an eye to a tawny owl while climbing up to a hide in rural Wales, the event which inspired the ingeneous title of his autobiography "An Eye for a Bird", 1970. Over his exceptionally long career he photographed over 1,800 species, and his pictures have appeared in some 1,000 books, including the popular New Naturalist series, of which he was photographic editor. Hosking was not only a photographer of birds but also a highly knowledgeable ornithologist.].