The Winged Life (book cover design) by John Minton, watercolour, gouache and ink on paper

Minton designed this cover for a biography of the pioneering French aviator and writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, who disappeared in 1944 aboard a reconnaissance flight from Corsica.

Although Minton received steady book illustration work, the circumstances of this commission are unknown. However, George Weidenfeld of Weidenfeld & Nicolson, the book's publisher, was a personal friend of publisher John Lehmann, for whom Minton designed many book covers and illustrations. This unpublished design was however substituted for a moonlit scene that Minton painted in oils. Biographer Pilot Officer Richard Rumbold, was, like Minton, gay at a time when homosexuality was illegal and stigmatised. Rumbold, who evaded the recruitment bar on gay servicemen, had enjoyed the friendliness and structure of RAF life when he served in the Second World War, but found his return to civilian life difficult. Purchased from the Parkin Gallery in 1983. Copyright: The Royal College of Art and Bridgeman Images / RAF Museum.