MARTIN, J. P. - Uncle and the Battle for Badgertown - (Hardcover in Wrapper) *

Book and wrapper still very good even though it belonged to a library before - This copy comes with a bit of APARTHEID history as it belonged to the BANTU SERVICE back in the days when even park benches said EUROPEANS ONLY - The black people didn't  seem to like it much as it was never issued - Illustrated by Quentin Blake - 171 pg. - A very scarce title - First edition - The last of his Uncle series of six books.   >>>   The sixth book about Uncle, the millionaire elephant who has a B.A. degree, begins with the Badgertown police seizing the belongings of Beaver Hateman, Uncle's enemy, because he has refused to pay his rates. And it ends with a tremendous fight, using egg bombs and duck bombs, between the Hateman gang and Uncle's supporters for possession of the Town Hall, and for the Great Mace, chief treasure of Badgertown.   -   With the help of a new follower, the dog Brass - who has a bark that makes the ears tingle - Uncle continues the exploration of the great castle of Homeward. He opens the baffling Closed Gallery, discovers the fabulous Jewel Room and visits Mrs Witch, who is threatening the trade of Wizard Blenkinsop.   - The most hilarious adventures come at Christmas ( the time of year that the author, the late J.P. Martin, loved best) when Uncle goes shopping and attends Dr Lyre's end-of-term party at the Academy. There is a sing-song round a Christmas tree so big that the guests can climb up into it to get their presents. Of course there is a mysterious gate-crasher hiding in the topmost branches.   Who could it be ?  >>>   J.P. Martin (1879-1966) was born in Yorkshire into a family of Methodist ministers. He took up the family vocation, serving when young as a missionary to a community of South African diamond miners and then, during the First World War, as an Army chaplain in Palestine and Egypt, before returning to minister to parishes throughout the north of England. He died at eighty-six from a flu caught while bringing pots of honey to his parishioners in cold weather. Martin began telling Uncle stories to entertain his children, who later asked him to write them down so that they could read them to their own children; the stories were finally published as a book in 1964, when Martin was eighty-four. The jacket to the first edition of Uncle notes that the inspiration for these stories seems to come from the industrial landscape that he knew as a child.