Thomas Handforth’s Photos for Osbert Sitwell’s Escape With Me! (1939)

Posted: March 16th, 2024 | No Comments »

I was just rereading Osbert Sitwell’s 1939 travelogue Escape With Me!: An Oriental Sketchbook (where he visits French Indochina and Peking) and noticed that the photographs in the book (with one exception) are by Thomas Handforth. Sitwell was a guest of Harold Acton’s while in Peking and dedicates his book, to Acton and Laurence Sickman (as well as McDonald, the former British Ambassador who rpesumably did some introductions) while noting photos by Handforth (who I’ve blogged about before). For anyone researching the gay ex-pat scene in Peking between the wars here’s one nucleus of it (Sitwell published in 1939 but was in Peking in 1934) . Handforth, from Tacoma, is perhaps best remembered for his illustrated children’s book Mei Li (1939). Here are his photos….

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