From the Lewes Book Fair (Slight Return): Gavin Lyall's The Secret Servant

I realise haven't done a Lewes Book Fair blog post in bloody ages – or indeed hardly any blogging at all – but I was just at the latest Lewes fair chatting to my friend, the book dealer Jamie Sturgeon, who asked me, as he usually does, whether I'll ever get back to blogging about books again. And having actually bought a book this time (not a guarantee these days), and taken a few pictures, I thought to myself, well, why the devil not? Hence this resurrection of the From the Lewes Book Fair format, which I have largely composed whilst sitting on the grass at Lewes Athletics track watching Edie (remember her...?) doing her pole vault training (don't ask).

The book wot I bought is in fact one I already own, in exactly the same edition (along with an uncorrected proof): a 1980 Hodder first of Gavin Lyall's excellent espionage novel The Secret Servant, the first in the author's short Harry Maxim spy thriller series:

I, ahem, spied it in amongst Mark Skipper of Cheltenham Rare Books' reduced-to-four-quid offerings and, as is my wont, and being a big fan of the book, decided to have a quick shufty inside, only to discover that, lo and behold, it was signed and inscribed, to a Tim Morris in thanks for "a marvellous lunch and occasion generally":

No idea who Tim Morris is or was – perhaps he's this one – but it was a nice find nonetheless. Also of interest at the fair, to me if nobody else, was this lovely signed photo I spotted hanging on the stand next to Jamie's table:

Yes, that's Ben Affleck in all his be-muscled glory (although not as buff as he would later be in 2016's Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice) as the eponymous lead of 2003's Daredevil film. I can't say I'm overly fond of the film (unlike the aforementioned Batman v. Superman, at least in its extended Ultimate Edition), but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't tempted. And to answer Jamie's question about which Morgan Freeman film the signed photo above it is taken from:

I can confirm that it's another Ben Affleck flick from the year before, 2002's The Sum of All Fears, based of course on a book hailing from Tom Clancy's imperial doorstopper period.