Category Archives: Front Page

fiction, Front Page

A distinguished mathematician is sent to Northampton to solve a murder
Peter Hall

9781911175568 It is the middle of the nineteenth century. Brothers William and Robert Crossley both seek refuge from the severe discipline of their father in their very different dreams. William wishes to stay in their hometown of Northampton and follow his uncle as the town’s best watch and clock maker. Robert longs to get away and become famous. William defies his father and refuses to take the Cambridge entrance examination. Robert finds a tutor in the Vicar of Upstone, who not only prepares him for the examination, but also leads him in the creation of a seminal mathematical theorem. Robert finds fame and fortune through the work. But Robert’s authorship of the theorem is questioned. The President of the Royal Society sends Edward Pennington, a distinguished mathematician, and Doctor Clara Cox, to investigate. They uncover secrets that not only change themselves, but also have unforeseen consequences for the whole Crossley family.
Published:May 2017
Paperback:378 pages
Price:£12.50
ISBN:9-781911-175568


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Front Page, history

The 1926 General Strike in the Black Country
David Taylor

9781911175995 In May 1926 Britain experienced a General Strike that lasted nine days. Why it occurred and what happened have been the subject of very polarised accounts, reflecting the different interpretations of the different groups of people involved as well as the differing viewpoints of the observers. Trade unionists, miners, the T.U.C., the Conservative government, Marxists and Communists, moderates, economists and, of course, historians of all shades of opinion, have all highlighted different aspects of this conflict. Wolverhampton and the Black Country have been little involved in this debate, mainly because the most dramatic events took place elsewhere. However, all the issues of the General Strike were reflected in Wolverhampton and the Black Country and in such a way as to allow all the different opinions of the protagonists to be more clearly discerned.
Published: Dec 2017
Extent: 140 pages
Paperback: £6.50
ISBN: 9-781911-175995
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The general strike is variably interpretable, because it really did mean different things to different people and this book explores these different points of view within the context of Wolverhampton and the Black Country.
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fiction, Front Page

The Swinging Pendulum of the Tide
Chris Green

The Swinging Pendulum of the Tide
Tom is an Anglican clergyman battling with his beliefs. He can’t come to terms with his wife’s tragic death in a car accident. He’s on his way to the remote Welsh island of Bardsey where he hopes to rekindle his faith away from the rush and demands of everyday life.
Beth is an Arthurian scholar on a quest to uncover the truth behind Bardsey Island’s claim to be Arthur’s Avalon. But, abandoned by her former lover, she too has her demons.
They meet in the bar of a hotel on the mainland where they are staying, before setting off to Bardsey on their separate quests. It is the beginning of a long and tortuous path which they must both tread. But it is a meeting that is destined to change their lives for ever.
Published: January 2019
Paperback: 372 pages
Price: £11.99
ISBN: 9-781912-419548

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After an early career in broadcasting (Granada TV) and PR (Britain in Europe Campaign 1975 and Queens’ Silver Jubilee 1977) Chris Green has worked in the cultural industries for 40 years. He was Popular Events Director of the City of London Festival (1978-1991), Director of The Poetry Society (1989-1993) and Chief Executive of the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers & Authors (1998-2008). He co-chaired the Music Industry’s Broadcasting Committee at the time of the 2006 BBC Charter Review. He contested Hereford and South Herefordshire for the Liberals (Liberal Democrats) in 1979, 1983 and 1987 when he came within 1200 votes of winning. He currently works as an independent arts consultant from his home in rural Herefordshire. He is chair of the Education Charity ‘Learning Skills Research’, a board member of Hereford’s Courtyard Arts Centre, a member of the newly formed Herefordshire Cultural Partnership and chair of the Francis W Reckitt Arts Trust. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a Freeman of the City of London. He was awarded the BASCA Gold Badge of Merit for service to the Music Industry in 2009. ‘The Swinging Pendulum of the Tide’ is his first novel.
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belief, fiction, Front Page

An imagined early life of Jesus by the former dean of Salisbury Cathedral
Hugh Dickinson

9781911175834 The most profound mystery of Christian theism is the affirmation that the man Jesus of Nazareth was also Divine. Exactly what that means has been a matter of constant debate for two millennia. Christian theologians have made use of a great variety of physical analogies and metaphysical concepts in the attempt to give a rational account of this belief, but the metaphysical algebra no longer has much traction for most people and divinity is not within the reach of materialist rationality. In order to emphasise the presence of the exceptional in him it has been natural to give greater narrative weight to the Divinity of Jesus of Nazareth than to his humanity, which has effectively been shrouded in the glow of the Divine The purpose of this brief essay in imagination is the belief that unless we grasp the biological earthiness of Jesus we cannot fully understand his the Incarnation.
Published: Oct 2017
Paperback: 86 pages
Price: £4.90
ISBN: 9-781911-175834
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The Very Revd. Hugh Dickinson, Dean Emeritus of Salisbury: Queen’s Scholar at Westminster. MA Oxford, Chaplain Trinity College Cambridge, Chaplain Winchester College, Bishops Adviser in Adult Education Coventry Cathedral, Vicar of St Michaels St Albans, formerly Dean of Salisbury, retired in the Cotswolds, distinguished poet and painter.
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Front Page, history

The Impact Of World War One on the Smestow Vale Villages
David Taylor

9781911175742 Perhaps the most popular strand of the local history of War World One concerns those who died in the war, looking at their lives and war experience, particularly the action in which they died or the unit they served in. Another strand considers the Home Front, particularly in the towns and cities or in locations where a notable activity took place, such as Zeppelin Raids or explosives manufacture. However, there is a third strand, equally important but little investigated, and that is the impact of the war on rural communities. This booklet looks at one such community, on the edge of the Black Country but clearly rural in character, the villages of South Staffordshire centred on what is now known as Smestow Vale.
Published: Aug 2017
Extent: 64 pages
Paperback: £5.00
ISBN: 9-781911-175742
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These villages have their own tale to tell of what happened between 1914 and 1918. There were the absences and deaths of many young, and not so young, men. But also there were air raid precautions, lack of public transport, increasing food production for local towns and themselves, new housing requirements and many other irritations and difficulties caused by the war. Followed by the celebrations at the Armistice and the signing of the Peace Treaties, and then the commemorations for those who would never return. The Impact of World War One on the Smestow Vale Villages looks at these villages to find out what we can discern after 100 years of what life was like in the countryside during The Great War.
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Front Page, history

The Shrewsbury Drapers Company
Nigel Hinton

9781911175803 A history of the Shrewsbury Drapers Company from the Middle Ages until the present day with special attention to the new Drapers' Almshouses. The Shrewsbury Drapers' Company looks at the effect of the Company on the town and on its development, the various charitable guilds and trusts connected with it and finally at the long struggle to create new almshouses for elderly citizens of the town and the successful conclusion to the project.
Published: Sept 2017
Extent: 250 pages
Paperback: £17.50
Hardback: £25.00
ISBN: 9-781911-175506
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Nigel is a chartered accountant with a passion for local history and cloud technology, he was master of the Shrewsbury Drapers Company in 2011/12.
He is married to Bridget they have three daughters and four grandchildren. Nigel`s other publications include Historical Hostelries with David Trumper, Silhouette, the story of the Little X, and a book for children, Baa Baa Blodwyn
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Front Page, nonfiction

Consciousness Matters – An Enquiry into the Origin of Consciousness
Oliver Leech

9781911175827 Consciousness Matters addresses the age-old problem of the relationship between consciousness and the material world. In the course of exploring some of the history of this major philosophical subject it looks at a range of materialist responses, such as mind-brain identity theory, behaviourism, functionalism and supervenience, as explanations for consciousness.
Set against these positions is the view, first, that consciousness is neither material nor reducible to material and, second, that consciousness is a prerequisite for our knowledge of the material world. If the latter view is the case, the terms of the debate are shifted fundamentally.
The theories of idealism and dualism of the material and the conscious are considered.
Published: Sept 2017
Paperback: 154 pages
Price: £6.90
ISBN: 9-781911-175827

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In contrast to the dualism made famous by Descartes, according to which there is two-way causal interaction, the long-neglected theory of occasionalism is introduced and explained with reference to two significant philosophers associated with it. A case is made for a revival of occasionalism that takes into account a more modern perspective. The book ends with an acknowledgement that it has only scratched the surface of this vast and very challenging topic.
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Front Page, travel

A grown-up gap-year spent in New Zealand
Godfrey Wilkinson

9781911175766 “Oh Bugger it! Why don’t we just go and live there?” Next morning we left our home behind and set off on the first leg of our great antipodean adventure.This is the story of a ‘grown-up gap-year’ spent in New Zealand. A melting-pot of recollections, reflections and abundant digressions, it is, by turns, tangentially informative, subjectively insightful and forthrightly irreverent. The author recounts, with frequent characteristically acerbic asides, the trials and tribulations, highs, lows and flat spots of stepping ‘outside the box’ and thirty years back in time, into a new life on the other side of the world. Along the way, he touches upon a diversity of nebulously related topics, amongst which teaching, long-distance walking, bureaucracy and drinking beer are recurrent themes. Anyone who has ever harboured a desire to seek out distant horizons will relate to the inherent urge to ‘up and go’ encapsulated in this account. Anyone who has never felt such wanderlust may find themselves re-evaluating their perspectives. Reading this book is unlikely to change your life but it just might change the way you think about it.  
Published: July 2017
Paperback: 278 pages
Price: £10.50
ISBN: 9-781911-175766

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Godfrey Wilkinson grew up in Lichfield, Staffordshire in the English Midlands: a city with a proud cultural heritage and an established tradition of landlocked introspection.In his mid-50s, after some 30-odd years as a Secondary School teacher (with occasional forays into the real world of Business and Commerce), he decided to get off the grid and realise a long-held ambition to experience the New Zealand dream. His occasional newsletters prompted friends to say, “You should write a book about it.” So he did. He currently lives with his wife, Jayne, and their New Zealand sheepdog, above a taverna overlooking the harbour of a small Greek fishing village.
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Malcolm Cowburn
Beyond drudgery: there is life after teaching

The title of the book is in Māori (‘Whā Kaupeka’) and then repeated in English (‘Four seasons in New Zealand’). Some chapter titles are in English and others in Māori indicating the emphasis of each section, I briefly offer the translation of the Māori words (with thanks to maoridictionary.co.nz): Pae Tawhiti (cast far away), Ngahuru (Autumn), Hōtoke (Winter), Kōanga (Spring) and Raumati (Summer). The attention to, and respect for Māori culture is one of the many strengths of this book.

In part personal memoir, drinking diary, nature journal, walker's log, cultural commentary and social polemic, this book is entertaining, informative and thought provoking. The author and his wife, both experienced teachers jaundiced with teaching policy and practice in the UK, decided to emigrate to New Zealand. The book is, in part an account of their experience. It captures, with humour, the frustrations of dealing with bureaucracies managing emi/immigration, house sale and purchase and employment in two countries at opposite ends of the globe. The acerbic eye of the author looks back in anger on the KPI driven world of English education managed by acquiescent careerists, and initially enthuses about the simple candour of staff-pupil relationships on the other side of the world. It is also an account of a long-distance walk undertaken by the author with two friends and his dog. The Cleveland Way is a 110 mile walk in North Yorkshire, England. The book is unified by the way it encounters the natural, cultural and historical worlds of both locations; these are well researched and expressed in an easy and accessible manner. The text is liberally punctuated with 'drinks breaks’ which the author manages with eloquent ease, savouring the new and relishing the familiar. The pains of emigration are not ignored, sadness and sorrow are economically yet powerfully expressed. Family ties and memories of England recur regularly throughout: humorously, for example, in the author’s early naturalist experiments that disturbed the, rhythms of family life, and poignantly in the references to his father. The book ends as it began with a refusal to accept life-numbing work conditions and a quest for adventure. The strength of this book is its clarity, and full-on engagement with the complexities and challenges of living fulsomely in the moment.