'I cannot exaggerate how much I admired this book – not because I knew the central participants intimately, but because it deserves admiration on its own merits for its honesty, its self-deprecating humour, its true ear for colloquial dialogue and the ability of the author to tell her story without conceit or self-pity. Put against some of the tawdry, fifth-rate crap that passes muster as autobiography in this age of declining standards, I would recommend it to anybody who values good writing and the nostalgic remembrance of times past.' Bryan Forbes The Oldie
DOREEN HAWKINS
288 pages, 16 pages b/w plates, full colour cover
ISBN 978-1-904-34966-2
MILES JEBB
Hardback, 248 pages + 16 pages b/w plates. ISBN 978-1-904-34977-8
PAMELA WATKIN
Paperback ISBN 0 946159 33 5
HILARY TOWNSEND
Paperback, 144 pages + 8 pages of photographs
ISBN 1 904349 50 1
The story of more tham 100 Dorset men and women whose exceptional courage or outstanding qualities make them true heroes. Original research by David Beaton has unearthed the story of many Dorset folk whose heroism had until recently almost been forgotten. With 24 pages of black and white illustrations.
DAVID BEATON
ISBN 1 874336 99 7
EDITED BY HUGO VICKERS
Hardback208 pages + 16 pages platesISBN 978-1-904-34954-9
www.hugovickers.co.uk
In the summer of 1946, George and his young landlubber bride Isabel set sail in Truant, a 49 foot converted Looe lugger, crossing the Channel to a war-torn Le Havre. From there they sailed up the River Seine to Paris, before threading their way through the French canal network, down the River Rhine and into the Mediterranean at Marseilles.
In 1946 the evidence of war was commonplace. Sunken ships obstructed harbour mouths and passage planning was made hazardous by Isabel gaily throwing overboard the chart showing the position of minefields off the Italian coast. Truant's final cruising ground was around the newly liberated Greek Islands, where George Miller's acutely observed descriptions of Greek social life offer a respite from Truant's increasingly temperamental engines. Isabel & the Sea is a marvellously good read and as Peter Bruce says in his introduction, 'George's seemingly magical powers of description gives us an accurate record of how one couple, with much fortitude, resolution and joie de vivre, skilfully managed to turn the difficult post war period in Europe to their own advantage.'
GEORGE MILLAR
Hardback, 416 pages, 4 pages plates, endpapers, maps ISBN 1 904349 46 3
Hardback ISBN 1 904349 26 9
The bestselling autobiography of the famous broadcaster's childhood and early youth. 'His descriptions of the countryside bring it alive in a way few other writers, with the possible exception of H.E.Bates, have ever done'. SAGA
For twenty-five years Jack Hargreaves's television programme 'Out of Town' gained him an immense following for its glorious mixture of rural ways and country life. His memories of the people, places and animals that were later to shape his broadcasts are certain to appeal to all those who share his love of the English countryside.
JACK HARGREAVES
Paperback 8 pages of photographs ISBN 0 946159 46 7
Also read about Jack's bestselling sequel, The Old Country
The story of more than 80 Somerset men and women whose exceptional courage or outstanding qualities make them true heroes. Original research by Roger Evans has unearthed the story of many Somerset folk whose heroism had until recently been almost forgotten.
Roger Evans
Paperback ISBN 1 904349 32 3
ANNE SEBBA
Paperback
320 pages, 8 pages colour plates, full colour cover
ISBN 978-1-904-34967-9
Paperback ISBN 0 946159 59 9
JOHN JULIUS NORWICH
Hardback
384 pages + 24 pages plates
ISBN 978-1-904-34958-7
Frances Campbell-Preston's glorious account of a life lived to the full. Frank, vivid, spanning nearly 90 years, it mirrors the times through which she has lived - its triumphs and tragedies.
Reviewing The Rich Spoils of Time, Hugh Massingberd described it as written 'with a delightful dry humour . . . Handsomely produced and impeccably edited by Hugo Vickers, who wrote the definitive biography of Dame Frances's former employer, Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother (to whom she was a lady in waiting for 37 years), it certainly makes for a fascinating read. . . Of her boss, the author remarks: 'She had dignity, but never pomposity or pretentiousness'. When Dame Frances, approaching 80, began talking about retiring, The Queen Mother cut in: 'Congratulations! You feel marvellous after you're eighty!' There are exquisitely funny vignettes about the characters of Clarence House . . . . . . The family vicissitudes are described with sympathy and wit, not forgetting the strange ministrations of a quack who believed that young Frances's contours could be reduced as if she were a statue by a jet of water plus a sharp rub with a horse brush. The outstandingly vivid wartime chapters remind one how much we owe to the sadly vanishing generation of which Dame Frances Campbell-Preston (born 1918) is such an admirable, modest and down-to-earth ornament.'
FRANCES CAMPBELL-PRESTON
Edited by Hugo Vickers
Hardback, 328 pages + 16 pages of photographs, ISBN 1 904349 47 1
www.hugovickers.co.uk/
LILIAN BOND
Paperback ISBN 0 946159 18 1
ED. CHRIS WRIGLEY
Paperback ISBN 0 946159 17 3
