Rosemary Manning’s The Chinese Garden with a cover by Germano Facetti

Browsing in the wonderful Heyward Hill bookshop the other day (where Nancy Mitford worked through the Blitz) with a friend and we came across this book from 1962, The Chinese Garden by Rosemary Manning, best known for her popular Dragon series of children’s books. It’s actually a story about an English girls school but the cover is by Germano Facetti – he is more interesting than the book – Facetti was head designer at the veritable house of Penguin where he changed the traditional look of Penguin books. As a teenager he was forced to spend time in Nazi deathcamp for being in the Italian anti-fascist resistance. Here’s his obituary.