Author: admin

In this country, there are two institutions that have been fundamental to the development of communities: the church and the pub.  There has been plenty written – rightly – of the magnificence of Romney Marsh’s churches, but less on its pubs.  Down the years, the Marsh has been served by some wonderful licensed establishments. Some of these have inevitably and unfortunately gone to the wall, although there are many fine examples still to be found. This book, by Keith Swallow, author of The Book of Syn, explores the history of the area’s hostelries and breweries and seeks to address some of this imbalance. Within it you will find dark deeds, ghosts, eccentric landlords and more.

2017 ISBN 978-0-9933203-1-6 Price £15.00

Join us on a trip back in time, to the Viking Age and to the first town in Norway. In twelve short stories, meet children and young people in the town of Kaupang. Following each episode, learn what the facts are and what we can only make guesses about. Look at the exciting things that the archaeologists have dug up: beautiful pieces of jewellery, ancient coins, animal bones, wells and privies – and even a grave, with the remains of what we believe may have been a grandmother with her grandchild.

Unn Pedersen (b. 1973), who is the author of this book, is an archaeologist and an expert on Kaupang. She took part in the excavations at Kaupang.

First published in Norwegian and now translated into English under the sponsorship of the Souvenir Normand (British Section) and with the support of NORLA. Published by Gyldendal Norway, but available in the UK from Edgerton Publishing Services

2016. ISBN 978-82-05-49696-5. Price £15.00

Did you know that nearly everybody lived on a farm, and that children did not go to school? Or that many people were slaves, while rich children became foster-children?

Come along with Thora, a girl from the town, as she goes on a visit to a farm where her cousin Ravn lives. You can follow them to the cemetery, into the logging woods, when they are preparing for Yule and when they are making sacrifices to the gods. The stories – and the facts – are based upon what archaeologists and other specialists have discovered by studying jewellery, sagas, graves, building traces and skeletons.

Unn Pedersen (b. 1973), who is the author of this book, is a Viking Expert. She is an archaeologist at the University of Oslo and has taken part in many excavations.

First published in Norwegian and now translated into English under the sponsorship of the Souvenir Normand (British Section) and with the support of NORLA. Published by Gyldendal Norway, but available in the UK from Edgerton Publishing Services

2016. ISBN 978-82-05-49695-8. Price £15.00

Pett à Manger, A Village Cookbook, complied by Wendy Norcott, was originally put together to help raise funds for the Pett Flower Show in 2005. (Pett is a small village in Sussex; see Pett in Sussex). Many of the recipes were collected from villagers. Ten years later, the current edition was published, including an extra chapter that contains some of the recipes specified in the Flower Show schedule in the years since 1987. The selection is inevitably serendipitous, but there are some recipes worth trying!

2015 (second edition), ISBN 978-0-9933203-0-9, Price £8.00

The Jewish Ghost – Being German: A Search for Meaning, by Louise Illig-Mooncie, describes one woman’s search for meaning. Louise was born into a post-war, post-Holocaust Germany and was tormented by a stream of questions about her purpose in life and the dilemma of her nationality at that time. Working in London for German TV increased her uncertainty and it was only as result of visiting a holy man in India and of another strange experience, that she was able to find solutions to her search for meaning.

2013, ISBN 978-0-9548390-6-2, Price £9.99

 

The Book of Syn – Russell Thorndike, Dr Syn and the Romney Marsh, by Keith Swallow, is partly a biography of Russell Thorndike, actor, author and brother of Dame Sybil Thorndike, partly a discussion of the Dr Syn novels, set around Dymchurch in Kent and so graphic that many still believe that Syn was a real person, and partly a look at the background of the Romney Marsh and the smuggling that went on there. The book also looks at the making of the three films based on the novels and at other spin-offs, including the stage play, in which Thorndike starred. For anyone who has been hooked on the Dr Syn novels, this book provides valuable background information.

Keith Swallow’s new book, Much Drinking in the Marsh, has just been published

2013, ISBN 978-0-9548390-9-3, Price £16.00

My Early Years Down Under, by John (Jack) Edge, is an autobiographical account of an English migrant trying to find work in Western Australia at the beginning of the Great Depression, 1929–1930. Jack, who had been working in his home town of Leicester, dreamed  of escaping to the open spaces of Australia and took an assisted passage out there. However, Western Australia had been hit hard by the depression and so Jack had to turn his hand to whatever (honest) work he could find. Two years later, he had to return to his job in Leicester. Nevertheless, this account, written many years afterwards, records his experience in vivid detail. The book was first published in 2009 and then a revised edition in 2011.

2011 (revised edition), ISBN 978-0-9548390-8-6, Price £12.50

A Destiny Defined, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Elizabeth Siddal in Hastings, by Jenny Ridd, tells the story of the poet/painter and his muse during their happy days in Hastings, where they were married. It subsequently goes on to consider the later, less happy, times, leading up to Lizzie’s death and eventual exhumation, so that Gabriel could recover the book of poems he had cast into her grave. The author Jenny Ridd and her husband lived at 5 High Street, where Lizzie had stayed and this prompted Jenny’s interest in the couple. The book also includes, together for the first time, three drawings of Lizzie made on the same day by Gabriel, Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon and Anna Mary Howitt at Scalands, the farm house owned by Barbara’s family.

2008, ISBN 978-9548390-4-8, Price £10.00

A Survivor’s Story, Prisoner of War to Parish Priest, by John Read, tells how John, working in a bank and a Sergeant in the Straits Settlement Volunteer Force in Singapore in 1941, was captured by the Japanese and sent first to work on the notorious Burma railway and then in a zinc smelting factory in Japan. The book falls into three parts, first John’s early history, then an account, remarkable for its lack of bitterness, of his captivity and finally his life as a priest after the war. John’s last parish was Pett in East Sussex, where he is still fondly remembered by many. He died in 2004. The book is illustrated with a number of John’s own drawings.

2007, ISBN 978-0-9548390-3-1, Price £10.00

A Changing Shore, An Illustrated Account of Winchelsea Beach by Michael and Ruth Saville, charts the development of this small seaside settlement since the 1930s, when it was called Dogs Hill or ‘thirty-one’ after the nearest Martello Tower. The book covers the coast itself, nearby Camber Castle, the development and silting up of what was known as Smeaton’s Harbour, the loss of the lifeboat Mary Stanford and development of the Rye Harbour Nature Reserve.

This book is no longer available and has been replaced by the revised edition/

2006, ISBN 978-0-9548390-2-4, Price £12.00