Born to a poor family in Flintshire in 1905, Emlyn Williams became a prominent actor and playwright in the mid-twentieth century. In 1961, he published George, the first volume of his autobiography. Written at a time when same-sex relationships between men were illegal in Britain, the book frankly discussed Williams’s own bisexuality, particularly an intense friendship with a fellow undergraduate while at Oxford, which resulted in Williams experiencing a nervous breakdown in 1926.

This copy of the sixth impression of the autobiography, printed in 1978, was presented to Queen Elizabeth II on the occasion of her visit to Flintshire in March 1984. It was bound by Paul Delrue, using a fine mixture of inlaid and onlaid coloured leather to achieve this pastoral scene from Williams’s boyhood.