Visit of His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales to the Gold Coast Colony 1925

Printed at the Govt. Printing Office, Accra, Gold Coast Colony, 1925 . Oblong 4to. Original cream cloth, patterned endpapers; pp. 242. two colour-printed maps at the end, highly illustrated after photographs, including fold-out illustrations; cloth a little spotted; otherwise very good. Very rare first edition of this Ghanaian imprint, celebrating and documenting the colony with very detailed information on the development, infrastructure, population, art, and economy. Scarce.

Guggisberg was a Canadian colonial administrator and author of books on Africa. COPAC locates only three copies, at Cambridge, Kings College and Newcastle University; not in the British Library.

Now for a description of His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales. He was medium built, height about 5ft 3ins., dressed in Shantung suit, with a smart shaped Kaikai helmet (which afterwards became known in Freetown as the ‘Prince of Wales helmet’) with brown suede shoes and curved handle cane walking stick, and oh boy, you should have seen how he marched along, he was a real poser! He also had on a gold watch and gold bracelet with the inscription ‘Edward P’.