GOLDEN DAYS: FROM THE FISHING-LOG OF A PAINTER IN BRITTANY. By Romilly Fedden.

(1919) 1920 reprint. Small 8vo (135 x 200mm). Ppxviii,233. B/w frontispiece portrait by S. Curnow Vosper. Grey-green cloth, spine and upper board titled in black, mayfly motif to spine and upper board.

The classic of flyfishing for trout in Brittany, written while the author was serving as an officer in France during the Great War. "Today I have fished again in France! O, but that sunlit hour was wonderful! Only those who have endured these weary times will fully understand - to find forgetfulness! And I had found much more - a wealth of old attachment, the mystery of the river, keen scents, soft well-remembered sounds, clean sunlight and the greenness of the valley ... The fairy seed of thistledown tiptoed from pool to pool. Among the weeds the dabchicks clucked contentedly ... Then up on the hill above the anti-aircrafts opened out - the shriek of shells resounded down the valley ... The fairy spell was broken, its glamour gone - one fell a-thud to thoughts of wreck and ruin, to madness, ugliness and pain; to dust-choked roads, crowded with sweat-stained, grim-faced men; to the weariness of their marching ... What right had I to golden-houred oblivion in such times as these?" "A charmingly written and illustrated account of fishing holidays in Brittany. Incidentally it gives a good deal of practical information." (Where To Fish 1922). "...a confirmed cynic about most of the modern world; during World War One he was a captain in the British Expeditionary Force in France and thereafter became a pacifist who could say, echoing his close Breton friend Jean Pierre, 'I hate all governments'".