David
Irving replies:

I ONLY just managed to obtain a copy of The Dawnchild three months ago — it cost me £80 (around 0).

I have a dream to republish the book under our own Focal Point imprint. Our family has many of the original illustrations.

Yes, my mother wrote that book long before I was born, and it became a bestseller in
England. Her typewriter was a Remington upright, the kind that you had to lift the carriage to see what you had typed. She passed it on to me when I was about six or seven, and I oiled it and got it working again and used it for the next fifteen years or so.

The Dawnchild created a new genre of mystical children’s books. She was a great professional illustrator too, working for The Nursery
World and the Radio Times — perceptive readers of those old publications will find sketches of myself and my siblings when our age was measured in months rather than years.

The book had a heavily embossed, plum-red cover. The illustrations had a Ronald Searle quality. In recent years I have received several inquries about the book from older generation people who have fond memories of it, and it is now very hard to find a copy in the used book stores.