Found– Moonlight at the Globe;: An essay in Shakespeare production based on performance of A `Midsummer Night’s Dream at Harrow School (Joseph, London 1946). It was written by Ronald Watkins O.B.E.  a drama teacher who at the time of the book was working at Harrow. This copy bears a signed presentation from the book’s illustrator Maurice Percival (to ‘Ted and Jessie’) with a letter in an excellent italic hand and an attractive self portrait drawing – both on Harrow School Art School notepaper. Percival illustrated 2 other books with text by Watkins- both on Shakespeare.

Percival falls beneath the Wiki radar but there is scattered information  on the web and an interesting press cutting about him loosely inserted in the book. This is from The Daily Telegraph Peterborough column in 1958  and was occasioned by an exhibition of 240 of Percival’s drawings of Roman scenes at Richmond Central Library. The article notes that he had been teaching art at Harrow (1945-1954), formerly at Malvern and as a locum for Wilfrid Blunt at Eton. Peterborough also writes that MP admits to being ‘quite non-plussed when confronted with nature’ and ‘wildly inaccurate..few artists care to make either claim.’  The exhibition also had a photograph of King Faisal II as a schoolboy at Harrow ‘doing some italic  writing.’  Presumably the ill fated king* was taught by MP, something of a calligrapher as well as a fine draughtsman.

*He had just been executed at the age of 23.