London: Secker & Warburg, 1984

8vo, pp. 602. Original brown boards, lettered in gilt to spine. Illustrated dust jacket, author’s photographic portrait to rear flap. Age toning to text block, otherwise a fine copy in a near fine dust jacket with some sunning to spine, and a faint production-fault crease to the laminate at spine edge of rear panel.

First edition, AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR TO HIS EDITOR JOHN BLACKWELL: ‘To John, Skip the Italian and abide to Cyrillic is what I say. You can’t go wrong. With many thanks and all that. Lots of love Mike’. ADDITIONALLY SIGNED AND DATED (’30th August 1984) TO TITLE PAGE. Volume Two of the Colonel Pyat quartet.

John Blackwell [1937-1997] joined Secker and Warburg in the late 1960s, when the imprint was still an independent company run by Fredric Warburg himself. He was a constant presence through the company's innumerable corporate takeovers, mergers and changes of managing director. He was Moorcock’s editor at Secker and Warburg, where much of his work was published. As well as Moorcock, Blackwell was literary midwife to Secker luminaries J. M. Coetzee, Malcolm Bradbury, John Banville, Tom McGuane, Tom Sharpe and Louis de Bernieres, among many others.