David Pracy’s minutely researched new book, A Purely Agricultural Parish? Nazeing before and during the Great War, published by YouCaxton and part of our History Series, is being launched at an exhibition by the Nazeing History Workshop, 5-7 May, at St. Giles Hall, Nazeing Road, Essex, EN9 2HU. Admission is free and there is a special offer on titles previously published by Nazeing History Workshop.

A Purely Agricultural Parish?  contains a wealth of detailed information about Nazeing families of all classes immediately before and during World War I and is enlivened by 180 illustrations. It is a very effective account of the social make-up of Nazeing at that time. It will be on sale at £10.00.

At 7.30 pm on Thursday 17th May, in Bishop’s Castle Town Hall, YouCaxton Managing Editor Bob Fowke will be repeating his talk, ‘Margaret Clive and Friends’, interest from the public having exceeded the available space in February.

During the eighteenth century some remarkable young women crossed the ocean to India to seek their fortunes. Margaret Maskelyne who married Clive of India and was sister to Nevill Maskelyne, Astronomer Royal, was one of the cleverest – and funniest. Bob Fowke will be exploring her life and the network of her friends,  in a talk relating to his upcoming book.

‘Women were an essential element within the Company from its earliest days. The gravestones and memorials around Saint Mary’s Church in Fort St George, Chennai/Madras, bear ample testimony; around a quarter of them are of women, several dying early in childbirth. But those tragic deaths tell only part of the story. It took courage, ambition and a spirit of adventure to travel to the far side of the world in search of love and fortune and the young women who undertook that journey were exceptional people, setting out of their own accord, sometimes with only the grudging consent of parents or guardians, and confidently accepting the risks. Many of them traded independently and some were of high intellect …’

Nonviolent Resistance to the Nazis by George Paxton, published by YouCaxton, has been receiving consistently good reviews. 

Peace News (UK): ‘… a goldmine of information, fascinating stories and inspiration for peace activists, this book deserves a wide readership.’

The Ghandi Way (UK): ‘Here is a proverbial labour of love. Over many years, I suspect, George Paxton has compiled information on nonviolent resistance to Nazi-occupied Europe. There are many stories of individual resistance, hard here to summarise in the review, and indeed I think the best way we can demonstrate this exceptional courage is to tell as many of these stories as possible… Paxton has done us a great service in writing this book.’

Jewish Affairs (South Africa): ‘Paxton also boldly wrestles with the sensitive question of whether the Holocaust might have been averted has German Jews responded at an early stage of their persecution with nonviolent resistance.’

Satyagraha Foundation (Netherlands): ‘George Paxton… has collected an impressive amount of research and combined it into “a perspective on the Nazi era which is rarely put forward,” … The first two parts provide a treasure trove of information, but it is the last part where the book comes into its own. Here he discusses, among many other things, the potential of nonviolent resistance, what makes people potential resisters and rescuers, what makes countries more prone to nonviolent resistance, and what a Gandhian style of nonviolent resistance might have looked like.’

Playing the Grey Man by Robert Moon has just been reviewed by Douglas Walker in the Sun newspaper. Among other things, the book describes corruption in the Scots police in fictional form. Robert is a former member of the SAS  and a former policeman and he felt compelled to write from his own experiences as a policeman, experiences that have left him critical of various aspects of policing in Scotland.

On 10 December 1884, Mark Twain self-published The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn with his nephew Charles Webster under the Charles Webster & Co. imprint. Twain was already a successful writer and wanted to maximise his profit. The book was written in dialect and broke new ground, away from more literary forms of writing. He was fortunate because the following year the book was ‘excluded’ by Concorde Public Library as being ‘trash, more suited to the slums than to intelligent, respectable people’. Subsequent publicity did nothing to harm sales and he went on to sell over 40,000 copies of the first edition.

Film maker Ken Loach invites us to consider Micheline Mason and Alan Sprung’s new book, published by YouCaxton, Healing the Hurts of Capitalism. This carefully argued book makes use of concepts more generally applied in psychology in order to arrive at an understanding of why our present system of finance and social relationships remains entrenched. His introduction is on the back cover.