Recent finds that add to our picture of Rafael Sabatini’s life - 2

Another friendship, starting earlier, perhaps, and of long duration was Rafael Sabatini’s friendship with Leon M. Lion, who was also, like J.E. Harold Terry, a collaborator on a play.

At Christmas in 1917, Rafael gave Lion a copy of The Historical Nights’ Entertainment:

Copies given to “Theo Sheard” and to W.D. Scott-Moncrieff have the same wording except for the place and date.  In both these the last line reads: “London, Dec. 1917”.

By August 1946 the friendship between Rafael and Leon Lion had deepened, so that a copy of Turbulent Tales is signed thus:

In between, in July 1937, “Raffles” wrote to “My dear Leon” about a contract being drawn up between the two of them and Tom Walls over the production of a film to be made out of “The Snare, A Dramatic Comedy in Four Acts by Leon M. Lion and Rafael Sabatini” (as stated in the U.S. Copyright dated 30 Oct. 1917.  It ends:

For all this data, once again the credit goes to my friend, Ernest Romano!

There is more, not from my friend but about a writer we are both now attached to as ‘our friend’.  That is a long, complicated account of data, research, results, and my conclusions – which are not necessarily everyone else’s.  But it must wait.

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