Henry II and Thomas Becket, 1973, Series 561 (blue)

Henry II and Thomas Becket was the 33rd title in the 561 series, colourfully written by John Roberts and illustrated by Roger Hall.  It was one of the last history Ladybird books to be published with the original Ladybird cover and format so was thus in print for a relatively short time.  As a result, it’s one of the hardest books in the series to find with that style cover.  In the 1970s it was reprinted but with the cover picture in a blue frame (and the the cover illustration was a new ‘portrait’ of the king, not found in the book itself).

This copy:

This is the later ‘blue-framed’ style cover – that is to say – the same contents as the first edition but with a different style cover.  It has matt boards and is in good condition inside and out  a little worn at the edges (especially bottom edge and corners, see photos).  There’s a small pen mark on the front endpapers but otherwise the reading pages are very good.  In short, a good copy of a book which – even in this later format – is quite hard to find.  It dates to the late 1970s.