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history, YouCaxton

Chapel Lawn and The Redlake Valley
Patrick Cosgrove

Published: 1st August 2025
Paperback: 133 pages
Price: £10.00
ISBN: 978-1-915972-82-8
Available from
The Great British Bookshop
Chapel Lawn and The Redlake Valley
A social history as told by extracts from the Clun Valley Parochial Magazine 1889 to 1899
by Patrick Cosgrove

These extracts from the Clun Valley Parochial Magazine for St. Mary’s Church, Chapel Lawn, at the time a chapel of ease to Clun Church, provide a fascinating glimpse into 19th century rural life in the Redlake Valley on the border of England and Wales.

The introduction of the magazine must have been very welcome. It not only provided important information about forthcoming church, school, and other social events, but it also enabled people to read news from neighbouring parishes and the wider world.

We must be indebted to the Rev. Charles Warner whose initials are at the end of the introduction to the first issue. It is through his personal efforts, plus encouragement from Rev. Preb. Jellicorse of Clunbury, and through delegation to the various curates who had the good fortune (or bad luck when the weather was inclement) to be attached to Chapel Lawn, that the Magazine was undertaken, and we have this account of life in a quiet rural community in the late 19th Century.

It was with some prescience that in March 1889, Rev. Warner wrote, “The monthly parts will, when bound, make a handsome volume, which will prove interesting, as a record of parish news for future generations.”



Originally from Hampshire, Patrick Cosgrove retired to South Shropshire with his wife, Di, in 2007.

Although not an historian, as he walked, cycled and rode his neighbour’s horse around the lanes of the Redlake Valley, he was struck by a palpable sense of history in the surrounding countryside, amongst the long-standing farming families, and especially by the mixture of English and Welsh place and field-names.

The discovery of a cache of old parish magazines provided the material and inspiration for this book and, Patrick hopes, will encourage others in neighbouring parishes to use the magazines in a similar way now that they are safely stored at Clun Museum.

history

Slates, Zeppelins and Evacuees
Nigel Jepson

Published: June 2025
Hardback: 148 pages
Price: £10.00
ISBN: 978-1-915972-87-3
Available from
Amazon
and
The Geat British Bookshop
Slates, Zeppelins and Evacuees
The Story of Emmanuel Holcombe C.E. Primary School
by Nigel Jepson

Slates, Zeppelins and Evacuees tells the fascinating story of a school which, despite its rural setting, has not always enjoyed complete peace and quiet. Most notably for example, when a German Zeppelin air raid attack created havoc in 1916, inflicting extensive damage on the school building.

In further relation to World War I, the reader is invited to enter into the mind of long-serving Head Teacher Henry Foster. Creating a ‘Roll of Honour’ in his poignant log-book entry of 1914, he respectfully inscribes the names of ex-pupils of the school serving in the nation’s armed forces, all of whom he had taught, adding detail as to the regiments they had joined.

Tragically, many of these same names were fated to appear on the commemorative tribute, erected at the nearby church in honour of those who lost their lives in the conflict. Meanwhile, the onset of World War II brought challenging times again for the school, not least with regard to accommodating evacuee pupils and teachers from Manchester.

Very often described as a ‘true village school’, Holcombe was set to have another rude awakening in more recent times when developments such as Ofsted and SATS came to pose a threat of a different kind to the school’s sense of well-being.

Though sometimes finding it difficult in early stages to adapt to a welter of new Government initiatives, the heartening story is told here of how Holcombe School, whilst very much retaining its character as a ‘true village school,’ has at the same time enjoyed great success in recent times in terms of the achievements of its pupils, staff, governors and parents.

fiction

Finding Clara
Graham Hitchcock

Published: May 2025
Hardback: 414 pages
Price: £14.99
ISBN: 978-1-915972-79-8
Available from
Amazon
and
The Geat British Bookshop
Finding Clara
The Revenant, the Heretic and the Occultist
by Graham Hitchcock

Demoralized academic Tobias Jackson, encounters an enigmatic young woman on snowbound train in the Highlands of Scotland, in the winter of 2011. From that moment onwards, a sequence of unnerving experiences forces him to doubt his core beliefs.

Tobias is supported by Medieval History graduate and former lover Emma Andersson. Emma makes a shattering discovery as she tries to locate the woman on the train. In an attempt to find out the true identity of this woman and achieve some resolution, they embark upon a dangerous and frightening journey into the past of Clair Sinclair.

Travelling in the footsteps of Clair, the journey takes them from Caithness, to the Isle of Mull and Iona, where an unsolved Scottish mystery engulfs Emma. Continuing onto Cathar Country in the Languedoc France, as they encounter people who knew Clair, they try to piece together fragmented clues. Coming face to face with evidence of terrible tragedies, they accept that Clair Sinclair believed she had been here before, as someone called Clara, remorselessly leading them to an unknown endpoint.

Returning to Scotland, Emma begins to unravel a tale of love and faith in a time of medieval inquisition and a remarkable escape story that turns historical orthodoxy on its head. As lost manuscripts and documents, buried history, religious and historical controversies emerge amidst a cast of unforgettable characters, a revenant, a heretic and an occultist collide.

Can Emma Andersson write the story of Clair Sinclair?

history

Shakespeare’s Cryptic Sonnets
John M. Glauser

Published: 9th June 2025
Hardback: 343 pages
Price: £25.00
ISBN: 978-1-914424-45-8
Available from
The Great British Bookshop
and
Amazon
Shakespeare’s Cryptic Sonnets
An interpretation
by John M. Glauser

In this fascinating and meticulous exploration of the language used in Shakespeare’s more mysterious Sonnets, John M. Glauser illuminates hitherto misunderstood areas of the poet’s work and suggests solutions to some of the most enduring linguistic puzzles.

To this end, the author extends his research beyond the Sonnets to Shakespeare’s other works – his longer poetical works and plays – and to his relationships with the most important people in his life, particularly his young patron, the 3rd Earl of Southampton, but not excluding the mysterious Dark Lady and other key figures.

The result is an intriguing and convincing new portrayal of Shakespeare’s complex, multi-layered writing and the often hidden religious and political meanings it contains – evidence of the poet’s dangerously unpopular opinions in the brutal world of the late sixteenth century.


Shakespeare’s Cryptic Sonnets is the product of over thirty-five years’ dedicated research.
Childrens

Meg’s Final Journey
T. A. Marshall
Published: May 2025
Paperback: 96 pages
Price: £8.00
ISBN: 978-1-915972-77-4
Available from
The Great British Bookshop
and
Amazon
Meg's Final Journey
by T. A. Marshall

Meg Larkin is in shock.

She has been given a terminal diagnosis by her doctor and she is expected to accept the inevitable without challenge - but she’s never been one to give up without a fight.

She plain refuses to accept the diagnosis and to let it define her fate and returns home disconsolate and angry. But good things can happen at any time.

There, on the doormat, is an invitation to join a luxury cruise, an escape from life’s problems.
It’s almost too good to be true.

Packing a small bag and with a careful choice of clothes, she goes on one ultimate journey.

And once on board, battling through the harsh realities of her illness, she finds unexpected strength and an ardent passion for the life that she is determined to hold on to.

What will become of her? Sometimes the hardest battles can lead to the most peaceful victories.

 
Tracey was born in Sheffield, South Yorkshire.
She is married and has two children who are both just entering their forties and lives in the lovely village of Thorpe Hesley.
A qualified tutor, she has a degree in teaching and has worked in the education sector for over 20 years.
Her work background is in the health and social care sector.
At seven years old, while at primary school, she won a book as prize for the best written account of a school trip and her vivid imagination stays with her.
fiction

White Wolf
Nick Gosman

Published: May 2025
Paperback: 281 pages
Price: £12.99
ISBN: 978-1-915972-76-7
Available from
The Great British Bookshop
and
Amazon
White Wolf
by Nick Gosman

In a story that pays homage to the latter-day frontier world of Jack London, WHITE WOLF recounts a lone woman’s struggle to survive in the arctic wastes of a forgotten land far from the world that most of us know or could imagine.

Here, in a purest space of bitter cold and uncompromising hardship, Migla is reborn. Forced to discover herself anew, her experience fosters a second catharsis and she becomes a different person.

Delving into her being to find the strength to survive, Migla comes to terms with her new life and falls in love with the animals and plants she encounters there. At times mystical and enchanting and at others deeply disturbing, WHITE WOLF is a treatise on the transcendence of the human spirit and the redeeming power of nature.

“All that is left of me is my robe and my spirit. Now I’m dying, I gave everything away. I don’t have anything to give you anymore. Only my robe and my spirit are in your hands. Now my tears come”

Wallace Black Elk



Nick Gosman gained an insight into what it takes to survive in the wilderness during his formative years climbing and mountaineering in Scotland and Continental Europe.

Since his early years wondering the world’s empty spaces with family and friends, wild nature has come to hold a deep spiritual resonance with the author, which he attempts to bring to his story-telling.
fiction

The Man on the Mountain
A babyboomer love story

Michael McCarthy won the 2023 Creative Writing Award of the Association for The Study of Literature and the Environment, the body which represents teachers and scholars of environmental writing and eco-criticism.


 The Man on the Mountain
A babyboomer love story
by Michael McCarthy

This is the account of an improbable and ultimately tragic love affair, between an arrogant and cynical drugs baron and an idealistic young policewoman. In fact, it was more than improbable, it was impossible. It could not have a happy ending. It was doomed before it began. Yet when in the end it happened, it was a true union of two hearts.

The remarkable love story of Gideon Horrocks and WPC Clare Sowerby is centred around a major drugs conspiracy, a multi-million-pound plot to flood all Europe with LSD. Set in a gritty and grimy location – the industrial Lancashire of the 1980s, in the early years of Thatcher’s Britain, with unemployment rapidly rising – it brings together two people each with great unhappiness in their pasts, who find, wholly unexpectedly, the possibility of a happy future together. Yet even as they do so, events are closing in on them, and an explosive climax is coming…

Told with remorseless pace, The Man On The Mountain combines two gripping and interlocking narratives – one about the fate of the most controversial of generations, the babyboomers, and the other about the power of love to reopen even the most tightly-closed of human hearts. And together they form a tragedy that is as unforgettable as it is extraordinary.
Published: May 2025
Paperback: 323 pages
Price: £12.99
ISBN: 9781915972729
Available from Amazon

Michael McCarthy has won numerous awards for his environmental journalism as the former Environment Correspondent of The Times and the longstanding Environment Editor of The Independent. His book The Moth Snowstorm – Nature and Joy (2015) was shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize, Britain’s principal nature writing award, and also for the Richard Jefferies prize. His novel Fergus The Silent (2021) won the 2023 Creative Writing Prize of the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment, with the chairman of the judges describing it as “wonderful.” This is his second novel.

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