MILITARIA COLLECTING
Picture books have been used to educate youngsters for centuries and publishers found colourful ways of chronicling World War Two in a way youngsters could understand. Austin J Ruddy shows how Britain’s foremost picture book publisher went to war.
But disaster struck on the night of December 29, 1940 – the ‘Second Great Fire of London’ – when Tuck’s headquarters, Raphael House, off Tenter Street, Aldgate was burned out by German incendiary bombs, destroying 74 years of records, including more than 40,000 original illustrations and photographs. However, the Tucks were not beaten and rose again, producing patriotic postcards and colourful greetings cards, plus, secretly, paper escape and evasion materials for MI9.
Although it would appear all Tuck’s wartime picture books were produced after the company’s records were destroyed, surprisingly very little is known about them today with researchers mainly focusing on the company’s Victorian output.
Unusually, all Tuck books are undated. However, historical clues in their text and pictures suggest most were published in late 1941 to 1942. This was the nadir of Britain’s war, when economy cuts were biting, making it remarkable that large s…
