All posts by Sarah

Story Telling Revisited
Alan Kestner


Alan Kestner produces paintings which are very detailed and superficially naive but which have sinister undertones.
They tell stories which are open to interpretation. This book has been produced to accompany his exhibition at the North Wall Gallery in Oxford.
Published:September 2018
Paperback:56 pages
Size:210 x 210 mm
Price:£10.00
ISBN:9-781912-419296

£10.00 (+ £2 postage)
Number of copies:




Look Inside
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Atlantic Lady – The oldest woman to row any ocean
Dianne Carrington

In the spring of 2016, recovering from burn-out and depression after many years in the NHS, Dianne Carrington was ready for a new challenge.
So when the phone rang and an old friend asked if she was ready to row the Atlantic in the Talisker Whisky Challenge, how could she say no?
She had always had an interest in outdoor activities and a big project like this was just what she needed to get back on track. Or was it? To row the Atlantic at any age is an undertaking beyond most of us but for a team of women in their sixties, and that was the idea that her friend was suggesting, it seemed almost impossible.
After all, the Talisker Whisky Challenge is one of the most demanding competitions on this planet.

Published: October 2018
Hardback: 156 pages
Price: £9.99
ISBN: 9-781912-419494

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


Available on Amazon

At twenty-one I was in the Olympic squad for white-water slalom canoeing but left to take up my career. I taught outdoor pursuits for ten years by the sea. I've always loved the sea and canoed on it almost daily, challenging my limits. Then learnt that I couldn't have children and I trained as a nurse, working my way up the career ladder in the NHS. At fifty-five I had to end my career prematurely after I burnt out, having given more than 100%. I lost confidence and my body was racked with pain; I was in a bad place. A team of wonderful people helped me get well again and I wanted to give something back. What better way than to raise money for charity and go back to the oceans that I love? Life is too short to not live it to the full. I set out to gather a lovely team of ladies as close to my age as possible who would be passionate about rowing across the Atlantic with me. I wanted to inspire women and show them that we are never too old to do what we want to do. I wanted to help them embrace the courage to leave sight of the shore and to accomplish great things.”
Reviews...

Listen Carefully to Me
Sue and Hugh O’Donnell

Published: September 2018
Paperback: 382 pages
Price: £12.99
ISBN: 9-781912-419371

£12.99 (+ £3 postage)
Number of copies:


Available from Amazon

Reviews...

The Great War’s Sporting Casualties:International sportsmen who were killed in the Great War
James Holder

The Great War claimed the lives of many professional and amateur sportsmen, including over three hundred who had represented their countries in one sport or another.
The Great War’s Sporting Casualties contains details of the sporting achievements and, where known, the circumstances of the deaths of those international sportsmen who were killed in the War or died as a result of injuries sustained in the War. It also contains details of nine other sportsmen who were killed in the War but who, although they did not represent their countries, did achieve something exceptional either in sport or in war.
Included amongst those listed are twenty-two Olympic gold medallists, twelve who captained their country at rugby, two who won the Tour de France and one who was a four-times Wimbledon champion. Also included are the three international sportsmen who won the Victoria Cross, one of whom was the only person to win two Victoria Crosses for deeds during the War and the fifteen who won the Military Cross.
Published: September 2018
Hardback: 502 pages
Price: £25.00
ISBN: 9-781912-419418

£25.00 (+ £3 postage)
Number of copies:


Available from Amazon

James Holder was born in Somerset and, after reading law at Cambridge University, practised as a solicitor; he now works as a consultant. He is passionate about sport and has always taken an interest in family history much of which involves relations who were fortunate enough to survive the Great War. He and his wife have four children and one grandchild and live in Oxfordshire.
Reviews...

Andrew Brown, Oxfordshire

This is an impressively comprehensive guide to how the Great War led to the loss of so many top level sportsmen. While that in itself is not surprising –it led of course to the deaths of people from all walks of life-it is a stark reminder as to how many young, talented people were lost in the prime of their lives. The book focuses on international team sports - football, rugby and cricket - and Olympians and it is interesting to see the different rates of losses; for example, the worst hit proportionally were rugby players and Scottish rugby players in particular. The author surmises that this could be because a higher proportion of rugby players were privately educated and as a result officers who led from the front.

As well as the many fascinating and tragic individual stories in the main section of the book, I also enjoyed the appendices. One gives useful summary accounts of the many different Great War battles while one also details the losses by the internationals which they played; of the 30 players who participated in the January 1913 Scotland versus France rugby international, 14 were to die in the subsequent conflict.


Tales From The Archive: Reading University Wives’ and Women’s Club – 1948–2018
Margaret Houlbrooke

Reading University Wives’ and Women’s Club
1948–2018

The journey travelled by the University of Reading Women’s Club has mirrored the individual paths taken by very many women between the late 1940s and today.
This book brings to life the archives of seventy years and through them it is possible to note the changes in women’s lives and attitudes.
Tales from the Archive is invaluable for the social historian as well as a memento for all Club members old and new.
Published: Sept 2018
Paperback: 160 pages
Price: £10.00
ISBN: 9-781912-419487


£10.00 (+ £2 postage)
Number of copies:



Reader Reviews...





Daughters of Hamilton Hall
Annie Beaumont

When a delicious young man knocks on her door one morning, it is the first time Laura has ever met an heir-hunter. And she has no idea that she’s ever had a great aunt either, let alone one from whom she is to inherit a neglected eighteenth-century mansion called Hamilton Hall in Norfolk.
Who were the Boulais-Hamilton family anyway? And where does Laura fit in? After all, she grew up with a single mum and had no other living relatives, as far as she knew. And how did her late mother come to be estranged from the Boulais-Hamiltons if they were her kith and kin?
If this is no fairy story, how can Laura, a part-time undergraduate student and part-time care worker, possibly find the money to restore Hamilton Hall to its former glory, let alone afford to live in it?
The answers to these questions will change her life and tell a story that spans five generations from World War Two to the present day.

Published:August 2018
Paperback:260 pages
Price:£9.99
ISBN:9-781912-419364


Available from Amazon

Annie Beaumont was born in Scotland and left before her first birthday. She was brought up in various places around England and the Far East. At 47, she began her Bachelor’s degree at Sussex University and went on to complete a Master’s at the University of East Anglia (UEA) and a PhD at Essex. She has taught sociology at Essex University and social sciences at The Open University. Annie is currently a student at the Unthank School of Writing in Norwich. Set in Wymondham, Norfolk, the county she made her own, Daughters of Hamilton Hall is Annie Beaumont’s first novel.


Reader Reviews

Amazon Reader
Lovely read, heard about the book thanks to local newspaper.
Read in a day - could not put it down.
Characters were believable. Liked the time hopping element.

The Grey Lodge – a world where senior police are untouchable
Robert Moon

From the school visit we remember, to the local beat cop who helped us out, we trust the police and we respect them - all of them. Despite the occasional cover ups, the miscarriages of justice, the corruption and the hidden decisions, it’s very much in our British psyche to trust police managers because we trust the local cop.
What if we shouldn’t trust them? What if we really knew how a murder could be covered up? What if, under the surface, lay a secret brotherhood protecting the elite and the chosen?
Robert Moon describes a world where senior police managers are untouchable, celebrities and politicians are protected after committing evil crimes, and when one man stands against them there is nothing they won’t do to hide the truth. It’s fiction – or is it?
Robert Moon’s vivid descriptions, detail and accuracy to police procedures and management are rooted in twenty-one years serving the public at the front end of policing in Scotland.


Other books by the same author...
Playing The Grey Man
Published:July 2018
Paperback:226 pages
Price:£10.99
ISBN:9-781912-419173


Available from YouCaxton

£10.99 (+ £2 postage)

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Available from Amazon

Robert Joined 23 SAS, became “Sabre”, and a squadron member for four years before accidentally joining the police.
He then walked, drove and ate ice cream in one of the toughest areas in Scotland for eight years before being exiled to the middle of nowhere. As the police changed from serving the public to serving statistics, he started to see a dark side to police-service and finally left the job, fed up of the corruption, nepotism and bullying, and after refusing his long-service medal. He now travels the world and complains a lot.
Reader Reviews...

Douglas Walker - The Sun Newspaper

Robert Moon has lived a full life. As part of the SAS he put his life at risk serving around the world.
After packing it in, he moved to the 'teuchter' branch of the Scots police expecting a simple life. Instead he was met by bent coppers and corruption dripping through the ranks from the highest echelons of the force.
Written with gallows humour, Moon is left deeply traumatised by what he experienced.
His description of front-line policing is too shocking to believe.


All Quiet in the Western Suburbs: WW1 – Letters home to Chiswick and nearby districts
John Grigg

Millions of letters were written home by soldiers and sailors in the First World War and the men from Chiswick, West London, were every bit as prolific as their companions from elsewhere. Most of the letters in this book were sent to the Rev. Oldfield in Chiswick and he sent them on to the Chiswick Times, but there are others are to relatives, friends and employers and the Chiswick Working Men’s Club, and there are interviews and reports from journalists in the Chiswick Times and the Acton Gazette.
This is a unique record of the experiences of servicemen from the district who served all over the world. They describe the horrors of the war, writing of ‘Jack Johnsons’ ‘Rum Jars’ and ‘Coal Boxes’ (all nicknames for enemy shells and bombs) although often with feigned indifference, but many do not touch on the horrors at all - perhaps to protect relatives and friends from anxiety. The war was not confined to the European Western Front and this book includes letters and reports from other parts of the world: India, Africa, Egypt, Palestine, Greece, Mesopotamia (present day Iraq), and the Dardanelles. There are even letters from Russia where British forces were engaged against the Bolsheviks after 1918.
Published: June 2018
Extent: 460 pages
Paperback: £14.99
ISBN: 9-781912-419319



Available from Amazon

John Howard Grigg was born in Feltham, Middlesex in 1935. He has lived in West London all his life apart from two years in Nottingham with relatives during the Second World War, and two years National Service with the RAF. He retired from the Midland Bank in 1987 and has always denied he was ever a bank manager. He served as a local councillor in Hounslow from time to time between 1958 and 1990. He is an amateur local historian specializing in local social and political history.
Reader Reviews...