All posts by Sarah

Front Page, travel

Stately Lancashire
Barry McLoughlin

Stately Lancashire
A county better known for its industrial landscape and urban sprawl, Lancashire in fact contains some of the finest country houses in the United Kingdom.
This book – a sequel to Stately Homes Alone: Independent Country Houses in the North West, published in 2021 – explores another eleven great houses in Lancashire. They range from much-visited National Trust properties to lesser-known mansions, a romantic ruin and a huge stately home that virtually vanished overnight.
Stretching from Lancaster in the north to Manchester in the south, and Liverpool in the west to Burnley in the east., they span Tudor gems such as Speke Hall and Rufford Old Hall, the just-restored ‘Jacobean Gothic’ jewel Bank Hall and undiscovered Heskin Hall.
The Wars of the Roses, the Reformation, the ‘witch trials’, the Civil War and the Jacobite Rebellion… Lancashire’s stately homes have witnessed a catalogue of major historic events.
Illustrated in full colour, the book includes richly detailed descriptions of the houses, their owners and their gardens, their restoration and how to contact them. Several of the chapters first appeared in Choice magazine.
Published:May 2022
Hardback:94 pages
Colour images:35
Size:6 x 9 ins
Price:£9.99
ISBN:9-781914-424533

£9.99 (+ £3.50 postage)
Number of copies:


Available from Amazon
This book also examines how some of the houses have attempted to deal with the growing recognition that their owners were involved in the transatlantic slave trade.

A journalist, editor and author since 1973, Barry McLoughlin has worked for local, regional and national newspapers and magazines, including four years as editor of Steam World, Britain’s biggest-selling historical railway magazine, and a spell as a parliamentary lobby correspondent at Westminster. He is the author or editor of fourteen books, on subjects ranging from railways to politics. He is a Life Member of the National Union of Journalists.

fiction, Front Page

Reparation – Entwined Victorian Lives and Cotswold Gypsies
Gail Fulton

Reparation
Entwined Victorian Lives and Cotswold Gypsies
Set in rural Victorian Cotswolds, we follow the intrigue of a fleeting love affair, mistaken identity and the tragic repercussions of jealousy.
Albert’s combustible temper together with Peggy’s secret past, lead their twin children into an adult life of risky adventure and heartache.
Truth will out but not without personal torment and devastating consequences.
Published: April 2022
Paperback: 262 pages
Price: £9.99
ISBN: 9-781914-424502
Available on Amazon

Gail Fulton has recently moved to the Cotswolds with her husband and Border Collie, Monty. Their two daughters and a future son-in-law have also relocated to the area and they look forward to many hours of dog walks, dining out and laughter.

Gail is now retired from teaching but has also always been passionate about interior design and floral art is also. Another passion is people watching! Gail gained an M.A. in Psychology, focusing her interest on personality development and she is intrigued by body language. She so loves her visits to coffee shops and observing behaviour.


Childrens, Front Page

Barley’s Biscuit, Pipit’s Perilous Plight
Roy Bradshaw

Barley’s Biscuit, Pipit's Perilous Plight


Up the Wrekin, here we go! Barley, the clever BorderCollie dog, Basil, his nephew and Mick, their human friend, have an exciting adventure and learn fascinating things about the Wrekin, a Shropshire beauty spot of fabulous rural charm, and a place of legends and wild imagination. When Mick runs into an old friend and local hero Gary, they start chatting – and the two dogs rummage around for an adventure...

Barley and Basil soon find themselves involved in a dangerous stand-off between a massive red-deer stag and a tiny meadow pipit bird.
Published: March 2022
Price: £6.99
Paperback 24 pages
Illustrations: Full colour
ISBN: 9-781914-424540


Available on Amazon
The stag is very distressed and Barley is not sure whether he’s friendly or not. But the stag is standing between Barley and a meadow pipit in serious life-threatening trouble – and she has a nest full of newly born chicks. Barley has to think quickly of a way to rescue the pipit. He needs to trust his instincts...

Does the meadow pipit understand that Barley is a friend? A new friend might just be able to help…

Teaching in primary, secondary and special educational needs schools gave Roy Bradshaw a broad experience in the joys that a good adventure story brings to young minds (and not so young minds). Coupled with a previous career in engineering, the teaching helped to gel a problem-solving mind with fun one. Growing up in the Black Country, then moving close to Ironbridge some thirty years ago has allowed him to discover many of the local beauty spots and to use them as a background for my children’s books.
fiction, Front Page

A new novel about double dealing in the murky world of international football
Alec McGivan and Hugh Roderick

The Bid by Alec McGivan and Hugh Roderick

A new novel about double dealing in the murky world of international football. Snouts are in the trough and fortunes are to be made from World Cup campaigning and presidential patronage.

Who will host the Global Football Organisation’s World Cup 2003? Six countries are bidding but Russia and Germany have a gentleman’s agreement that will fix the result to suit them both. Or so it seems...

Meanwhile, the GFO’s President is up for re-election. He and his confidants – including the sinister ‘Laundryman’ – are desperate to hang onto their golden tickets. And they don’t care how they get the support they need.

Bumbling onto the international stage comes England’s credulous football chief. He begins to unravel a web of corruption, some of it closer to home than he ever imagined. But how can an elderly Cornishman bring down this monstrous organisation? Or will he get blown away by ruthless men with too much to lose?
Published: March 2022
Paperback: 385 pages
Price: £9.95
ISBN: 978-1-914424-29-8
Available from Amazon

Sometimes this is a world of farce. Where a drunken former footballer is slow to unravel the mysteries of Bangkok. And where a GFO Board member happily offers his World Cup vote in exchange for naming rights to a royal baby.

Then suddenly it all becomes a matter of life and death...


Alec McGivan

Alec was born and brought up in Bristol, the son of Welsh parents.

In 1981 he was appointed National Organiser of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), the new party’s first member of staff. He quickly established a reputation as a formidable campaigner in a series of high-profile parliamentary by-election victories.

A decade later Alec was recruited by The Football Association to be part of its management team established to plan and stage manage the highly acclaimed Euro 96 tournament. He then became Director of a bid to stage the World Cup in 2006. Following the bid Alec joined the BBC, working first on the project to renew the BBC’s Charter, and then as Head of BBC Outreach.


Hugh Roderick

By a strange coincidence, Hugh Roderick was also born in Bristol to Welsh parents. But the authors first met much later, while living in the same village in Oxfordshire.

After university he became a journalist, specialising in education. He went on to write speeches for Government Ministers (including Shirley Williams…coincidentally one of the SDP ‘Gang of Four’ that Alec was working with shortly afterwards) and IBM UK’s chairman and CEO. Hugh later headed marketing and communications at the Science Museum, and then became director of a corporate marketing agency.
Reference

British Metal Woodworking Planes 1800-2000 (4 Volumes)
Jeffrey W. Warner

After 15 years of painstaking research Jeff Warner’s epic study of English metal planes and their makers has finally been published in a four volume hardback set.

Volume One (528pp)
Begins with a brief study of early metal planes before 1800 and goes on to explain the beginnings of professional plane making during the century with detailed descriptions of makers such as Robert Towell and Kerr going on to Norris, Preston, Spiers and the like.

Volume Two (289pp)
Dealers and retailers of metal planes.

Volume Three (412pp)
English metal planes from 1928 –1960, mainly American style planes pre the DIY era.

Volume Four (438pp)
English metal planes from 1960 –2000, mainly American style planes post the DIY era.

All the volumes are profusely illustrated with detailed colour photographs of planes, packaging and catalogue extracts. The set is an invaluable resource of information to tool and plane collectors and should rank alongside the other standard works of the tool world.

Available from GandMTools
livesinprint

The Adventures of Agnes : Wartime nursing in Bulgaria, Poland, Persia and Russia 1912-1919
Tom Fowke

The Adventures of Agnes

Agnes Greg was born into a wealthy Lancashire cotton family. In 1912 a middle-aged Edwardian lady at a loose end, she decided to try her hand at nursing. Providentially, after many years of peace, Europe just then became engulfed in war and opportunities arose. Barred from nursing for the British, for seven years she worked behind the front lines of friendly or allied armies in the Balkans, Poland, Persia and Russia often in improvised field hospitals and dressing stations in difficult conditions and she journeyed long distances between them, often by primitive means. She had a traveller’s eye for landscapes and places of interest and mixed easily with local and expatriate populations. She nursed Turkish prisoners of war in Bulgaria, local peasants, Russian soldiers fighting Austrians and Germans in Poland and fighting Turks in Persia. At times she was seriously ill herself and she was trapped in the Caucasus for nearly two years during the Russian revolution and civil war.

This book uses Agnes’s extensive correspondence with family and friends so that the reader hears her adventures described in her own vivid and amusing words and all intermingled with private and domestic concerns illustrative of her epoch and circumstances. Additional background material provides the political, military and family contexts.
Published: Dec 2021
Hardback: 268 pages
Price: £24.00
ISBN: 9-781914-424328

Available from Amazon

Tom Fowke was formerly a civil engineer in various areas of the water industry. He is a great-nephew of Agnes Greg, and is married with two children and two grandchildren. Now retired to England, he previously worked for periods in Qatar, Iran and New Zealand, and lived for some years in Spain.

Childrens

My Brother Tom Has Superpowers
Harriet Axbey

Published: Dec 2021
Price: £5.99
Hardback 24 pages
Illustrations: Full colour
ISBN: 9-781914-424250


Available in the UK
from YouCaxton

£5.99 (+ £3 postage)
Number of copies:
Grace is sure her brother Tom can read minds; he knows exactly what everyone's thinking!
Grace just has to guess (which can be hard at times).
But things might not be exactly as they seem with Tom's powers.

A story about the different gifts all have, as seen from an autistic perspective.
Created by both autistic author & illustrator.

Childrens

Dizzy Spells
George English

Dizzy Spells
by George English
“There used to be a wizard living in my street.” So begins Micky Carter’s adventures, meeting wizards and council officials as he and his friends try to protect the local community. Lots of fun and danger along the way as Micky, cook and “Knockie Nine Doors” champion, finds himself in places and situations he could never have imagined.

George English – Former radio broadcaster, Further Education lecturer and reviewer of children’s books.
Published:November 2021
Paperback:94 pages
Price:£6.99
ISBN:978-1-914424-41-0

 Available from Amazon