[Pietro Annigoni: personal reminiscences of John Phillips.] Privately-printed pamphlet: 'Maestro Annigoni', containing stories relating to the Queen, Princess Margaret, the Duke of Bedford and Violet Trefusis. Inscribed to Barbara Reed.

After a twelve-year 'amitié amoureuse' with Phillips, Violet Trefusis died in 1972, appointing him her literary executor and leaving him her last home, La Tour de Saint Loup. The present item – only one other copy of which has been traced – is from a collection of Phillips's papers amassed by his friend Barbara Reed, containing pamphlets privately printed by him between 2009 and 2014. Phillips's obituary in the Daily Telegraph ('John Phillips, globetrotting flâneur and literary executor of Violet Trefusis', 24 March 2017) places the item in context, by describing how, at the end of his life, 'economics caught up with Phillips. He sold Violet Trefusis’s house, papers and chattels. He moved to Thailand after spells in Italy and Switzerland, settling in Phuket, from where he tried with relentless persistence to persuade friends and casual acquaintances to seek publishing outlets for his memories of once famous figures or to purchase valueless copyrights, despite having sent his own papers to the Lilly Library at Indiana University in 2004 and 2013 [...] His friends sighed at the deluge of attachments which arrived by email, along with desperate pleas for financial assistance.' Very much a home-made affair: bound in transparent plastic covers, with spine of green tape. Drophead title on p.1: 'Maestro Annigoni'. Title on cover, with portrait of Queen Elizabeth by the artist: 'DIAMOND JUBILEE'. [1] + 8pp, 12mo. Inscribed to Reed at foot of p.1: 'A Great Occasion | Dearest Barbara | from | John'. In addition to cover, six colour illustrations. Reminiscences of the painter (with a story apiece about the Queen and Princess Margaret), the Duke of Bedford and Violet Trefusis, as for example: 'The portrait of Princess Margaret, One day in Marlborough House, waiting for the Princess to come for her sitting, suddenly a bite from a corgi on his ankle. A powerful kick sent the dog flying across the room striking a large standing clock, which started to click with vigour, | A moment later the Princess entered and exclaimed, “Maestro, what have you done to fix my clock?”' Of Annigoni's celebrated portrait of the young queen Phillips writes; 'looking attentively, one finds a minute fisherman in a boat, who is – the Maestro assures me – himself. He told me that he sensed, in the presence of the young Queen, a feeling of her awareness of her heavy responsibilities, and of a loneliness, derived from her unique destiny. He tried to suggest this in the portrait.' Of Trefusis's first meeting with the painter Phillips writes that 'with her habitual teasing charm, she proceeded to bully him. He was made so graciously to accept and admire the rather ghastly ties that she bestowed as a mark of favour on her “nephews”, tired acquired en masse at a bargain shop on the Ponte Vecchio. The same “tie game” that was played with Francois Mitterand. The friendship flourished.' The item is not present among the 'Writings' listed in the inventory of the Phillips Papers at the Lilly Library, and as stated, only one other copy has been traced. That copy is present among the Barbara Reed collection of Phillips papers, offered separately.