MACDONALD, Alan David. Euphrates Exile. London, Bell, 1936.
Original orange-red cloth, spine lettered in black, map endpapers; pp. 301, illustrated with plates from photographs; light wear to extremities, a little offsetting from endpapers, as usual; a very good copy.
Very rare first and only edition of an account of intelligence work for the R.A.F. in Iraq, entertainingly written and well-observed, with comments such as this: 'The Western democracy which has been fathered on this country is taking on queer shapes. We have just had a general election and it has been interesting and instructive for me to have had the privilege of observing it from a front seat' (p. 137). MacDonald reports on his experience of life in Iraq during the final two years of British Mandate, which ended in 1932. The author might well have encountered Freya Stark, who published her first book on and in Baghdad in 1932.
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