Name/Title
GS: Books,1997, "Prayer of King Richard III"Description
This book, although signed by "Jay", was designed and illustrated by June Struben-Clinton. A square, slim, and attractive little book, it is bound in wine-dark silk. The introduction by June Struben-Clinton tells the story of the prayer.
June had had her art training at the National College of Art in Dublin, around 1956, where she specialised in book illustration, painting, and stained glass. She put her art on one side for many years but picked it up again with great enthusiasm in the early 1990s.
In her author profile written around 2015, June wrote:
"Struben Clinton was a child in the 1940's and a student in the 1950's in Dublin, Ireland, in the days when it was a place frozen in time, under the collective thumbs of Eamonn De Valera, John Charles McQuaid, and Pope Pius XII. 'I lived in Blackrock around the corner from a house with a blue plaque commemorating that James Joyce lived there. Ulysses was still not for sale in Dublin though I couldn't find anything in it shocking enough to merit it being banned. I left Ireland aged 22 and from then on lived in many different parts of the world without any of them ever becoming home. Dublin was a place where I belonged. Travel, music, art and language all inspire my writing, as does the complexity of human relationships.'"
Jennie Mack Gray, February 2026: "June was the partner of my uncle Michael McAllen, who had originally been married to my aunt Monica (nee Mack). Due to various family imbroglios, I lost touch with Michael (always a favourite uncle) for more than 10 years. June joined the Gothic Society at a time when I had no idea who she was. She bought tickets for her and an anonymous guest for the Society's supper at Newstead Abbey on 28 September 1991, and it was there, to my amazement, that I saw Michael again. It led to an extraordinarily fruitful partnership between the three of us in artistic and historical matters. This was the best chance meeting of my life."
