The Vassall Affair (Signed and Inscribed, Association Copy)

1st edition, 1st impression. Signed and inscribed by Rebecca West to Sir Theobald Mathew, then Director of Public Prosecutions, ‘To Sir Theobald Mathew, with admiration and friendship, Rebecca West, 1963’. There’s also a plain postcard loosely laid in, signed and inscribed by Rebecca West to Sir Theobald, ‘Dear Sir Theo, I didn’t expect you…Yours ever, Rebecca West’, dated July 28 1963. In stiff card covers (a little rubbed at edges, lightly scuffed around spine). Internally neat, clean, bright and tight. John Vassall was an English civil servant convicted for spying for the Soviet Union’s KGB in the early 1960s, in a trial overseen by Sir Theobald Mathew in his role as Director of Public Prosecutions. Vassal was thought to have been compromised by his homosexuality, with th KGB blackmailing him with the threat of releasing photographs, taken at a honey pot party in Moscow, of Vassall in compromising positions with several men. West, then a correspondent with the Sunday Telegraph, re-analysed the evidence and came to a different conclusion on Vassall’s motivations. This likely accounts for her comment on the post card that she didn’t expect Sir Theobald to approve. The scandal was damaging to the Macmillan Government, although soon superseded by the Profumo Affair. A unique peace of literary history giving insight into state espionage during the Cold War and contemporary views of homosexuality. 8vo.

Espionage, Spies, Spying, Cold War, Signed Books, Homosexuality, KGB, Soviet Union, Director of Public Prosecutions, John Vassall, Sir Theobald Mathew, association copies, presentation copies