All posts by Sarah

Was it Yesterday
A. M. Bown

Was it Yesterday When he volunteered in 1914, A.M.Bown was a twenty-year-old scholar at Oxford studying science. He became an artillery subaltern and remained one throughout the First World War, being wounded twice and gaining the Military Cross for bravery. This book, although fictionalised, grew out of his personal experiences and is a vivid and authentic, if fictionalised, account. He tells of ordinary day-to-day incidents, some amusing, some frightening, and gives a sense of real lives - and real deaths. He keeps throughout a respect for his fellow soldiers, saying: “So this little team in khaki stood waiting for the starting gun … in the greatest game of all, and whatever share the fields of Eton may have had in any winning of it, that same share must be credited to the back alleys and the cinder patches, the parks and the recreation grounds which had been the nurseries of most of those who stood together in that forward line, picked to play for England”.
Published:3rd August 2015
Paperback:218 pages
Price:£11.99
ISBN:9-781909-644595
Available from Amazon
and Kindle

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Profits from this edition will be divided between the Royal British Legion and Trinity College, Oxford, a scholarship to which gave the author his start in life.
Reviews...

Times Literary Supplement
“No synopsis of the movements and adventures of that battery could give an adequate impression of the scope of the book and quotation will do it less than justice. In style it is simple, light yet adequate; the humour is never forced and the ever present sense of tragedy is never unduly emphasized”.

Flamingos over the Yorkshire Moors
Fay Carr

Fay Carr_Flamingos over the Yorkshire Moors_Cover As a young child living in Rome, Gabriella knew only the comforts of life and the love of a dedicated family. But her cosy world was disrupted by events that at her tender age she could not understand. During her growing years she recaptured in far away Africa the joys and happiness of life that also paved the way to a happy marriage and the fulfilment of motherhood. But another chapter of life was to begin and in Yorkshire she fought the hardest battles of them all.

Fay now lives in Yorkshire which she has made her permanent home. She is a keen club bridge player which takes her to play in different parts of England and Scotland. She now enjoys holidays mainly in Europe.

Published:15th July 2015
Paperback:208 pages
Price:£9.99
ISBN:9-781909-644762
Available from Amazon
And Kindle

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Reviews...

Paw Prints on My Heart
Molly Jean Rowe

9781911175704 Shy, the traumatised Labrador rescued from a puppy farm, arrives on the brink of a breakdown. Several months after losing their German Shepherd, Molly and her husband John decide to look into re-homing an elderly dog or a dog with special needs. Along came Shy, a six year old Labrador, terrified of people and desperately in need of a loving home. It was never going to be easy taking on such a very needy dog.
Paw Prints on My Heart lets you share the first twelve months of the journey that turned this little dog’s life around. It’s a very personal and true story that has been written to encourage people who are thinking about adopting a rescue dog, to open their hearts and let a sorry little soul in.
Published: June 2017
Paperback: 200 pages
Price: £8.50
ISBN: 9-781911-175704


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Molly Jean Rowe is not a celebrity or a writer; she’s a housewife, a wife, mother, grandmother and great-grandmother who loves her family and has a great love of animals especially horses and dogs. At an early age in Molly’s life her father brought home a collie puppy. It was the runt of the litter and Molly fell in love. They were inseparable. This marked the beginning of her love for dogs. Throughout her life, Molly has had many dogs, most of them rescue dogs. She has given them a loving home for life. Molly was never able to own a horse until she was in her mid-forties but since that time she has owned six horses and has never sold one of them; just like her dogs, they have a home for life. She loves riding and showing her horses in hand and has many rosettes. Writing her first book was not easy but Molly wanted people to understand the ill treatment that takes place in some puppy farms and the trauma that many dogs suffer, in the hope that it will contribute in some way to their welfare.
Reader Reviews...







History of medieval Weymouth and its evolution as a trading port.
James Crump

9781909644809 Weymouth is usually thought of as a ‘Georgian’ town, but this book shows how much of the physical appearance of the town was determined many years before the arrival of George III himself. It examines the parallel histories of the twin towns of Weymouth and Melcombe Regis from the eleventh century to the end of the sixteenth, charting their rise and subsequent decline. It explains how their early growth was based on the great medieval trades of wool and wine and how growth was influenced by their connections with France which developed particularly in the years of the Angevin Empire. Their later decline was caused by the disruption of these trades and by the ravages of war in the Channel, part of the great conflict with France known as the ‘Hundred Years’ War’. In the midst of this the population was overwhelmed by the catastrophe of the Black Death.
Published:7th July 2015
Paperback:112 pages
Price:£6.99
ISBN:9-781909-644717
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James Crump read modern history at the University of Oxford and taught school students, undergraduates and extramural classes for many years. Before moving to Dorset he has written on social and industrial history subjects mainly in northern contexts. He has been researching Dorset history for many years and is especially interested in the early history of towns.

Reviews...

George Butterworth Memorial Volume
Wayne Smith

9781909644632 George Butterworth, a close friend of Vaughan Williams, composed some of the most enchanting and acclaimed English music of his time. He was killed during the battle of the Somme as dawn broke on the 5th August, 1916. Owing to the severity of the fighting his body was buried where he lay, the site marked by a simple wooden cross never to be rediscovered. Consequently his name occurs among the 73,357 listed on the Thiepval ‘Memorial to the Missing’. For his actions during the last few weeks of his life, George was awarded two Military Crosses and put forward for a third. In 1918 his father, Alexander Kaye Butterworth, privately published a ‘Memorial Volume’ for family and friends, of which only a handful of copies are known to have survived. It consists of a collection of tributes and letters of appreciation (including a moving contribution from Vaughan Williams) that he had received, alongside reviews of George’s music and concerts.
Published:15th June 2015
Paperback:150 pages
Price:£10
ISBN:9-781909-644632
Available from Amazon

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The main part of the book consists of George’s own ‘War Diary and Letters’ – a document of historic importance publicly available here for the very first time. This anniversary edition has been produced to mark the centenary of George Butterworth’s death and as a tribute to all of those whose place of rest remains unknown. For them, his ‘Banks of Green Willow’ has become an unofficial anthem.

The Memoirs of Eva Gillies
An Interpreter at Large

cover The Memoirs of Eva Gillies
Eva Gillies (née Krapf) was a wonderful story-teller. She would entrance friends with tales of growing up in Argentina, of speaking four languages and devouring books – leading on to her vivid memories of Oxford life as a student in the late 1940s and eventually as a free-lance interpreter based in Geneva. She became truly a citizen of the world, as a professional conference interpreter in such key places as Hanoi after the French-Vietnam War, Lagos in newly-independent Nigeria and Warsaw at the height of the Cold War. She then returned to Oxford in 1962 to study social anthropology at Evans-Pritchard’s Institute. She was widowed shortly after her first marriage to Hasan Askari, but carried on with research of her own in West Africa and with a spell of teaching in the University of London. She then married Mick Gillies and settled with him in the Sussex village of Hamsey, whence they migrated seasonally to West Africa for his specialist studies of mosquitos. Eva continued her own writing and translating in Hamsey – and, especially, continued to entertain visitors from far and wide. After she lost Mick, friends encouraged her to write up her memoirs, and we are now proud to present the result – a tribute to her life and to the extraordinary range of personal encounters that shaped it.
Published: 1st Jan 2014
Paperback: 235 pages
Price: £12.99
ISBN: 9-781909-644137

Available from: Amazon,
Waterstones, Blackwells
and other retailers
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Edited by Wendy James,
Emeritus Professor
of Social Anthropology,
University of Oxford.

Continue reading The Memoirs of Eva Gillies
An Interpreter at Large

Compiled by Butterworth’s father with a contribution from Vaughan Williams.
Wayne Smith

9781909644632 George Butterworth, a close friend of Vaughan Williams, composed some of the most enchanting and acclaimed English music of his time. He was killed during the battle of the Somme as dawn broke on the 5th August, 1916. Owing to the severity of the fighting his body was buried where he lay, the site marked by a simple wooden cross never to be rediscovered. Consequently his name occurs among the 73,357 listed on the Thiepval ‘Memorial to the Missing’. For his actions during the last few weeks of his life, George was awarded two Military Crosses and put forward for a third. In 1918 his father, Alexander Kaye Butterworth, privately published a ‘Memorial Volume’ for family and friends, of which only a handful of copies are known to have survived. It consists of a collection of tributes and letters of appreciation (including a moving contribution from Vaughan Williams) that he had received, alongside reviews of George’s music and concerts.
Published:15th June 2015
Paperback:150 pages
Price:£10
ISBN:9-781909-644632
Available from Amazon

Pay with PayPal
£10.00 (+ £2.50 postage)

The main part of the book consists of George’s own ‘War Diary and Letters’ – a document of historic importance publicly available here for the very first time. This anniversary edition has been produced to mark the centenary of George Butterworth’s death and as a tribute to all of those whose place of rest remains unknown. For them, his ‘Banks of Green Willow’ has become an unofficial anthem.

Detailed survey of the Shropshire Botanical Society.
Alex Lockton & Sarah Whild

frontcover The Shropshire Botanical Society is a not-for profit organization that is open to all botanists in the county and elsewhere, whatever their level of botanical skill. We hold field meetings, produce a bi-annual newsletter and hold indoor meetings with speakers. Our main remit is to provide a forum for recording the distribution of vascular plants, bryophytes and stoneworts within the vice-county, to provide botanical recording data for the conservation of plants and their habitats, and to provide training opportunities for botanists who wish to improve their identification or recording skills. All of our members and committee officers are volunteers and we always welcome new botanists. Many of our members also belong to the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland, the national organization for all amateur and professional botanists.
Published:1st March 2015
Hardback:454 pages
Price:£35.00
ISBN:9-780953-093724

Available from Summerfield Books


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To find out more, visit www.bsbi.org.uk – all of our field meetings and newsletters are on the Shropshire page of this site.