The event takes place on October 24 at the Holiday Inn in Coram Street, Bloomsbury, offering second-hand, rare and unusual titles from more than 40 exhibitors.
A highlight is this first-edition copy of The Arab of the Desert by Harold RP Dickson (1881-1959), priced at £450 from fair exhibitor Andrew Saidi of London bookshop White Eagle Books.
Dickson, who was born in Beirut and foster-mothered by a Bedouin wet nurse, served as a British political agent in Bahrain, Iran, and Kuwait, later working for the Kuwait Oil Company.
His book, published in 1949 and running to over 600 pages, details Bedouin life and is considered a valuable chronicle of their nomadic traditions before oil wealth changed the cultural and physical landscape of the region.
The edition includes a dedication to the then-current ruler of Kuwait, Sheikh Ahmad Al Jabir Al Sabah, who Dickson praised as a “staunch supporter of Great Britain”.
