WARNING: This article contains spoilers from Antiques Roadshow.
An Antiques Roadshow guest’s jaw dropped as a top figure was given for a first edition of her husband’s classic children’s book.
Book expert Justin Croft was eager to meet with his next guest at the Botanic Gardens in Belfast, who had a close connection to a beloved children’s book.
“I’m usually looking at old books, this is definitely not an old book”, the BBC star began.
“This is a very recent book indeed. This is Guess How Much I Love You by Sam McBratney and illustrated by Anita Jeram, which was published in 1994. So why have you brought it?”
The guest explained: “My husband wrote this book. He had his first book published in 1976, and when he was having the book published in the 1990s, he said to the editor, ‘This book will be forgotten in another couple of years. Why am I not rich and famous?’
“And she said because you don’t do picture books. And he said, ‘Oh well, that’s a pity because I can’t draw anything.’
“And she said, ‘We have illustrators that can draw anything you can think of in your head. What we don’t have is somebody that can write a good book in a couple of hundred words.’”
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She continued: “So he scribbled an idea on the back of an envelope or a receipt or whatever and dropped it back in, and by the time he got home to Northern Ireland, she had sent him a letter saying ‘We’d love to develop this idea. Go ahead, and we’ll find an illustrator.”
“And the rest is history,” Croft commented as she agreed: “I know. In months, the first million was sold. Amazing.”
The expert then went on to talk about his own memories of the book: “And this is obviously a first edition by your husband and also by the illustrator.
“This is a book that’s so familiar to me because it is a book we read to our children. It was a nightly treat to read Guess How Much I Love You.”
The guest, however, began to wince as he divulged: “We still have our copy, the cover’s off, the spine’s off, it’s almost shredded to pieces but we loved it. The little hare and the big hare.”
He began quoting: “Guess how much I love you. I love you -” with the guest finishing off his sentence: “To the moon and back.”
She stated: “And I mean now that’s almost a cliche. You see it everywhere, but actually, it occurs first in this book. I love you to the moon and back, that was my husband.”
For a brief moment, the appraisal took a sad turn, as Croft stated that her husband, famous author Sam McBratney, was “no longer with us.”
She confirmed with a regretful smile: “No, he died just three years ago.”
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Bringing the focus back to what was in front of them, Croft pointed out that she had “all of the early stages of the book recorded” in the form of a scrapbook.
“While he was talking to people and signing books and everything, I was going around saying, ‘Oh, can I have a copy of that, can I take one of that? and I brought them home [for the scrapbook],” she explained.
“The really fascinating thing for me now is that we have it in so many different languages, but this is the point that really moved Sam.
“He said that he couldn’t believe that somewhere in the world, every night, somebody was reading their little one his book and the number of people that told him, ‘Oh my daughter on a good day loves me to the moon and back and there are some nights she hardly loves me to the door and back.’”
Croft concluded their segment together: “It’s amazing to see it and it’s amazing to see it with you and the scrapbook which you have faithfully kept all that time.
“Now, it’s very difficult to value this book. It’s a recent book, there are millions of copies of it all over the world, even the first edition was a very large edition, there would be many, many thousands of copies of that still in existence.
“So my valuation has to be completely speculative, but I think, the two together, £3,000 to £4,000.”
The book’s owner gasped, her jaw dropping and eyes widening at the four-figure sums.
As the audience clapped, she exclaimed: “Oh my goodness, oh my goodness. That is amazing.”
Antiques Roadshow is available to watch on BBC One and BBC iPlayer.
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