Scribbling Lark

158pp. Orange cloth-covered boards, black titles on spine. Sun faded spine, bumped ends. Internally neat, clean, bright and tight. No dust jacket. 8vo. Set in the mid-1930s, Zig and Zag are two monkeys who escape from the confines of a zoo together with an old and condemned cart-horse amid a great hue and cry from officialdom. The trio meet up with a cockney character who aids and abets them, and takes them to his ‘farm’ where he looks after them along with his other animal friends. And in due course our crafty cockney has the brilliant idea of entering the trio for the Derby. To avoid recognition the fugitives, with many complicated manoeuvres, are disguised: the old grey cart-horse with indelible scribbles as on the egg of a Yellowhammer (once known in the country as a ‘scribbling lark’). The two monkeys become one single jockey. By hook and by crook, against all odds and with a great deal of mayhem, the trio do indeed enter the Derby.