John Roland Abbey

He attended Windlesham House School, Brighton from 1907 to 1909 but was subsequently educated in nearby Rottingdean by a private tutor, Mr Möens, after an accident caused permanent damage to one of his elbows.

[1][2] In November 1914, at the start of World War I, he was commissioned as a regimental officer in the Rifle Brigade, serving for two years on the Western Front in the 13th and 8th Battalions.

His younger brother Lieutenant Noel Roland Abbey was killed on the Western Front in April 1918 while serving with the Grenadier Guards.

He also became interested in modern bindings, and in 1931 commissioned examples from Sybil Pye and, from R. de Coverley & Sons, a copy of Siegfried Sassoon's Memoirs of an Infantry Officer decorated with Abbey's coat of arms.

He died on 24 December 1969 in London, and, with the exception of manuscripts given to his family and a group of books donated to the Eton College Collections, his remaining texts were sold for £993,509 between 1970 and 1975.