All posts by Sarah

livesinprint

When I Was Young – Memoir of Norman Wimbush
Mark Todd

In late Victorian Birmingham the Wimbush family with their three children gain their livelihood and maintain their respectability in a small café and confectionary business in the centre of the city. Their son Norman, writing in middle age in the 1940s, recalls their everyday life and his parents’ contrasting personalities in painstaking detail, and also his life in local schools and as a clerk at the firm of Nettlefolds, from where his studies at night school eventually enable him to go to University. Re-development of the city centre in the early twentieth century destroys his father’s business and contributes to his early death. Other chapters describe the world of Norman’s grandparents – grandfather Wimbush a tenant farmer in rural Oxfordshire and grandfather Hill a baker in Birmingham Horsefair – and some of the characters of their children, Norman’s uncles and aunts, including his young uncle Ambrose Wimbush as he takes the first steps in developing his bakery business. In the opening chapter Norman tells the story of his mother Annie’s journey as a teenager in the 1870s with her sister and brother-in-law Minnie and Frank Jackson as they emigrated to USA to live and work in Boston, Massachusetts.
Published: May 2019
Paperback: 180 pages
Price: £10.00
ISBN: 9-781912-419647

£10.00 (+ £2.50 postage)
Number of copies:


Available from Amazon
Reviews...

history

The Box of Beautiful Letters:A wartime love story revealed from 1939-1941 correspondence
Cheryl Underhill

The Box of Beautiful Letters
A wartime love story revealed from the 1939-1941 correspondence between Lily Smith and RAF pilot Martyn Allies
Lily and Martyn met in London and fell in love at the beginning of World War II, before the bombs had started to fall. Shortly after, Lily, then aged nineteen, was evacuated to work in Torquay and Martyn was called up to train as an RAF pilot. As their feelings for one another deepened and their affectionate letters became ever more passionate, circumstances forced them to live further apart.
The war intensified and Lily moved back to Woodford Green in London. The couple kept up each other’s spirits through their prolific letters, Martyn describing his alarming flying experiences, and Lily painting a colourful picture of everyday life amidst air-raid sirens and bombing raids.
Was marriage ever going to be within their reach? Their letters give a rare insight into life in war-torn Britain and into the experiences of a fledgling RAF pilot advancing to the status of a Coastal Command pilot operating from Iceland.
Published: Sept 2021
Paperback: 364 pages
Price: £11.99
ISBN: 9-781913-425944


Available on Amazon
This treasure-trove of letters might have remained hidden forever had not Cheryl Underhill found them in a battered cardboard box at the back of a cupboard. Painstaking work has knitted them together to form this remarkable book.

Cheryl Underhill, a former primary school teacher, discovered many new interests in retirement and one of these, encouraged by her membership of the u3a, was historical research. Once she had set about reading the wartime letters that she’d discovered, and appreciated how well-written they were, she embarked on producing a book to tell the writers’ story, in the context of its era. This, she hoped, would be a tribute to Lily Smith and Martyn Allies’ love for each other, and the love felt for them by their family and the many others with whom their lives had been entwined.
This exceptional book was featured on Radio 4’s programme Saturday Live on 16th April 2022.

Non-Fiction, Uncategorized

Midlife: Problems and Solutions – A Jungian Perspective on the Midlife Crisis
Renata Symonds

This book is the distillation of the professional wisdom of Renata Symonds (1913 – 2007), a London-based Jungian psychotherapist.
She deals with the perennial problems of humankind that may particularly become evident at the threshold of the second half of life: finding meaning in one’s existence; facing conflicts in work and marriage; dealing with depression, loneliness, and sexuality; and fear of death.
These great themes are explored from the perspective of the writer’s experience in helping people become aware of the unconscious aspects of their problems, especially through dream analysis. Many cases are described of how clients in this way – rather than by resorting to medical drugs to suppress symptoms – make real progress not only in resolving their difficulties but also in achieving inner growth as well.
No dry treatise or self-help book – how to recognise if you’re going through a midlife crisis and what to do about it – Renata Symonds speaks with warmth and enthusiasm of her approach to her clients’ difficulties. The text is enriched by references to Jung and Freud and contains many literary and mythological allusions.
This book will be of interest to the general reader with a basic knowledge of Jung’s ideas, as well as those undergoing or contemplating psychotherapy.
Published: October 2018
Hardback: 206 pages
Price: £20.00
ISBN: 9-781912-419432

£20.00 (+ £2 postage)
Number of copies:


Available on Amazon
Reviews...

artbooks

The Goddess
Viv Martin

The Goddess is about a series of monotypes and paintings that I made from and about the Goddess, a copy of a tiny prehistoric figure.
In many ways I should say ‘with’ her, because she kept surprising and challenging me like an imp on my shoulder, questioning and commenting as each image developed.
As an artist, this experience was thrilling. The series began with a sketch I made of a small ‘Venus’ figure. This image was at the heart of my work for most of a year, during which I made 36 monotype paintings on paper and four larger oil paintings on canvas.
Published:September 2018
Hardback:94 pages
Size:210 x 170 mm
Price:£10.00
ISBN:9-781912-419562
£10.00 (+ £2 postage)
Number of copies:

Also available from Amazon

This book tells the story of the development of my relationship with the image of this tiny Goddess and the development of the series. There is information at the back of the book about the monotype ‘printmaking to painting’ techniques used to make these multimedia works.
Look Inside
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livesinprint, Non-Fiction

A Snazzy Tale – The Creative Journey of Face Painting for Children
Lauren Staton

Face painting is a wonderful creative activity which has bought a lot of joy to children, delighted parents, and raised millions of funds for charities all over the world.
This activity became popular in a very short space of time.
This is the fascinating tale of the journey that lead to the creation of the first strong brand of children’s face paints, starting from a small kiosk at a holiday centre in 1985 and eventually reaching a global market.
Lauren and Paul Staton were responsible for bringing face-painting products onto the high street and teaching thousands of people about face painting as an entertainment for children.
The true journey started years before however.
This is an inspirational story of success that grew from passion and from the personal tragedy that fuelled Lauren and Paul's determination.
It will teach you that if you have faith in what you want to achieve, you can truly make magic and make-believe happen.
Published: Sept 2018
Hardback: 184 pages
Price: £9.99
ISBN: 9-781912-419463

£9.99 (+ £2 postage)
Number of copies:


Available on Amazon
Reviews...

fiction

English and History -Sex, drugs and Scottish fiction: a literary love story
Cait Woods

Head of English, Chris Elliot is struggling with his stressful teaching job at Aberlayne Academy, a High School in North-East Scotland. Caught in a downwards spiral of depression and self-doubt, he is horrified to learn that the student teacher to be placed in his department is an unwelcome figure from his past.
Ally McClay’s placement threatens the last threads of Chris’s sanity, especially when he brings with him a toxic and dangerous connection to the powerful Binnie family. For Chris, reconnecting with Ally also means facing a past that he has never come to terms with.
English and History follows Chris’s journey through the chaotic mess of his inner life via the haven of literature to self-acceptance and love.

Published:October 2018
Paperback:290 pages
Price:£9.99
ISBN:9-781912-419456
Available from Amazon
Cait studied medieval French literature to doctoral level and taught at Aberdeen University, before retraining as a Secondary School teacher. She lives in North East Scotland with her kids, cats and beloved Arab horse. English and History is her first novel.


Reader Reviews

Amazon Reader - Neil Curran
 Absolutely loved this book.
Read it in one day, which is quite unusual for me but I got so involved with the characters and their stories that I found it impossible to put down.
Highly recommended!

Amazon Reader - Lorna
 It was so easy to get into, in fact, so hard not to just at the collection office and read it!
Totally gripped me and kept me reading. Look forward to many more..
Read in a day - could not put it down.

Amazon Reader - Steven Woods
 Absolutely loved this book.
Read it in one sitting and loved every beautifully crafted sentence.
If you buy and read one book this year make sure its this one. A truly joyous read!

Front Page, livesinprint

Auntie Emmie’s Suitcase
Susan Davies

Emmie Chester died on 9th March 1988. For the previous ninety five years, she had lived a quiet life in Shropshire, looking after her parents and family and later her great-niece Susan Davies, but once, long ago she had lived a very different life. It was something she didn't talk about very much.
During World War One, she had served in France in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps and was wooed by a handsome Australian entertainer. She might have moved with him to Australia.
On Emmie's death, Susan found a battered old suitcase in the attic, which contained a jumble of her aunt’s letters, photographs, documents and souvenirs from that time. The suitcase revealed a life of comradeship, austerity, romance and also of sadness and it gave an insight into the changing role of women in society during the early twentieth century.

This is the story of Emmie Chester’s life in France told in words and pictures, as it emerged from the contents of a battered old suitcase.
Published: October 2018
Paperback: 64 pages
Price: £7.99
ISBN: 9-781912-419333

£7.99 (+ £2 postage)
Number of copies:


Available on Amazon

Following a long career in the Probation Service, Susan Davies now enjoys an active and varied retirement in Shrewsbury.
Reviews...

history

Ironopolis: Establishes Wolverhampton as the heart of the Black Country
Nick Moss

Nick Moss started to seriously research the history of Wolverhampton within a Black Country context around 2015, saving various articles for personal interest only. In studying local books about the Black Country, he was surprised to find a considerable disconnect between the views expressed by highly-respected local bodies such as the Black Country Society or some 20th Century authors, and those views expressed prominently in local newspaper archives or in books written during the critical 1800s-period - when the ‘original Black Country’ evolved both in name and as a physical entity.
Increasingly, he found strong evidence that fundamentally contradicts the now-widely accepted definition of the Black Country based solely on the existence of the thick coal seam. And Wolverhampton, once widely considered its original ‘Capital’ or ‘Metropolis’ has increasingly seen itself removed from Black Country history in recent years, and this work attempts to correct what he perceives as an anti-Wolverhampton stance and a misrepresentation of local history.
Published: September 2018
Extent: 474 pages
Paperback: £17.70
ISBN: 9-781912-419395
Available from Amazon
Nick analyses the different Black Country definitions, and clarifies the original, widely-accepted one which he proposes should still apply. Additionally, he hopes that anyone with an interest in Wolverhampton, will find it to be a detailed and enjoyable read, that in turn provides definitive but controversial and to some, surprising conclusions, that may cause considerable waves in some circles, and perhaps even kick-start a reappraisal of elements of Black Country history.
Reader Reviews...