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News & Events

A round-up of book signings, author interviews, news and events.

Griffin & Mr Tailor

When computer games loving twins Ty and Max Cramford learn that some revolutionary new prototype game consoles have been stolen in the USA on the day of the launch, they decide to do something about it. On holiday in Florida with their parents and new pets Griffin and Mr Tailor, they offer their services to the Secret Management Force, which is investigating the crime. Realising that two games-crazy youngsters could be just the people to help solve the crime, the chief of the SMF takes them on – and the biggest adventure of the twins’ life begins…

A thrilling story for youngsters by a talented young writer.

Eleven-year-old Ayomide Akande has contributed many stories to Young Writers publications in the UK. A pupil at Saint Olave’s Grammar School in Orpington, London, he enjoys PE and history and plays rugby and Eton Fives for his school. He hopes to become a professional athlete and a well-known author. Contact Ayomide on isa541315@yahoo.com

11th June 2015 0

The Technical Progressman

In A Dockyard Apprentice’s Story, Robert Smith (‘Nige’ to his mates) told of his formative years as a young trainee in Chatham Dockyard, where he trained as an engine fitter and turner. The Technical Progressman is set in the 1960s, taking up the story from the point where Bob transfers to the Weapons Section as a Technical Progressman. It is the second part of a trilogy covering the whole of Robert’s working life with the Ministry of Defence.

Far from being a dry catalogue of working experiences, the story is packed with amusing and offbeat anecdotes – as befits a young man growing up in the decade of pop groups, mini skirts and flower power.

11th June 2015 0

A Dockyard Matey Makes Good

In his first book, A Dockyard Apprentice’s Story, Robert Smith (‘Nige’ to his mates) told of his formative years as a young trainee in Chatham Dockyard, where he trained as an engine fitter and turner. The Technical Progressman was set in the 1960s, taking up the story from the point where Bob transferred to the Weapons Section as a Technical Progressman. Now Bob has added a third and final part, about his post-Dockyard adventures working with the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE), and in posts with the MoD and Government agencies, and published the whole story in one volume.

The full story of his career is packed with interesting stories, and Bob’s sense of humour shines through.

11th June 2015 0
Three Crossbows and a Lion Rampant

Three Crossbows and a Lion Rampant

This unusual book describes a history, covering four centuries, of a line of Hurrell families, linked together under the family coat of arms of three crossbows and a lion rampant. The family line is first encountered in the Essex village of Sible Hedingham in the 1500s, and is then followed through Cambridgeshire to London and Zimbabwe, formerly Southern Rhodesia.

Major William Hurrell emigrated to South Africa in 1877 as a young man, and had the crest from the coat of arms engraved on his fob watch, now in the care of John Walsh. John and his niece, Major Lesley Kerr Bone, both descendants of Major Hurrell, have collaborated to write this fascinating history.

John Walsh read Forestry at Oxford and practised both in Zambia and in Tasmania. Now retired, he lives in Hobart, with his wife Doreen. He has a life-long interest in history, both general and that of his forbears. However, having listened to recollections about his family’s past, he decided that there were facts that needed to be explored and details that required proof. So when he discovered that Lesley Bone also had a deep interest in the history of the Hurrell family, the project was launched. Lesley had the advantage of a lifetime spent developing her genealogical skills, and tenacity of purpose that comes with a career as an officer in the army reserve. She carried out most of the research for this project, which at all times has been backed up by accurate historical and factual evidence.

Living in London, she was well placed to make use of the extensive records of births, marriages, deaths, wills, census returns and other documentation. All this has combined to make a very detailed, interesting and easily read record of one line of a family through various historical settings and events.

20th April 2015 0
Shadows at Sunset

Shadows at Sunset

Who is the strange, shadowy figure who ascends the steps of the abandoned cottage at precisely the same time each evening? Is the strange man dressed in black standing by the side of a deserted country road promising rescue – or a death of unspeakable horror? And what is the true motive of the silent, withdrawn young man who joins a cycle touring group?

These dark, imaginative short stories are the work of a retired Government scientist who now spends much of his time walking the lonely shores of the South Wales coast. Perhaps too much of his time…

6th April 2015 0
Flying on the Ground

Flying on the Ground

After a harsh initial training as a Boy Entrant at RAF Cosford in the 1950s, Gerry Davis went on to serve 15 years in the RAF, mainly on Air Movements, before joining ‘Civvy Street’ and spending the rest of his working life in a demanding civilian post at Bristol Airport, when he also joined the RAF Volunteer Reserve and served as Training Officer. His account of the adventures of a career spanning more than 44 years covers a wide range of experiences, from the amusing to the astonishing.

A fascinating glimpse of the flying business from the inside.

6th April 2015 0
Looking for the Rainbow

Looking for the Rainbow

Sally Painting was seven when she was diagnosed with liver disease. During her teenage years her life was saved three times. Inspired by those who cared for her, she became the first person in the UK to become a nurse after receiving a liver transplant. Over ten golden years, Sally became a role model for other transplant patients, caring for them at Birmingham’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital and winning a swimming gold at the World Transplant Games in 1999.

Sally’s special life was captured in her diaries. This is her story.

6th April 2015 0
Icecreams, Gasmasks and God

Icecream, Gasmasks and God

Joyce Lovely grew up in Liverpool during World War 2, her family narrowly surviving a blitz which severely damaged their home and killed two thousand of their fellow Liverpudlians in a single week. She and her young friends dreamed of peace and safety, but not as much as they dreamed about ice cream and chocolate and later, handsome boyfriends. As a teenager in the post-war years she found herself pursued by romantic suitors. Her choice of husband was ultimately guided by her early discovery of God and faith, which was how she found herself a newly-married woman struggling to run her first home in the wilds of the Shetland Isles, trying to make ends meet on the slim pay of her minister husband and the kindness of the islanders.

A charming memoir of a young woman’s childhood and coming of age.

6th April 2015 0

The Mahler Family

‘One does not normally connect Gustav Mahler with the holocaust, which came much later – but the seeds of the persecution were already there, in Vienna, in the ever-present anti-Semitism which Mahler himself had to suffer and deal with; and of course members of his family were caught up in the tidal wave of the holocaust when it came. Robin O’Neil’s book is valuable in that it is the only one that makes this necessary connection. Coming events cast their shadow before. In a sense one is pleased that Mahler was spared this awful development, unlike his friend Arnold Berliner.’ – Charles Muller: Diadem Books.

Through the Mahler family letters between Gustav Mahler and the physicist Arnold Berliner, we are privy to their inner thoughts and daily musical life during Vienna’s ‘golden autumn’ that preceded the turbulent times that followed. After Mahler’s passing and with the rise of National Socialism, we follow the lives of the extended Mahler family, their friends, associates, and Vienna’s musical and operatic elite. With the introduction of the Nuremberg Laws, we observe the frontal attack on European Jewry and subsequent deportation policy enabling a ‘Jew-free’ Reich, where many close friends and family were to end their days in exile and the death camps of Nazi Germany. We follow Dr Berliner into the world of German scientific research, where among this collective of scientists, Berliner’s close friend is the highest-placed British spy in Germany throughout World War II. This was significant in the race to dominate the nuclear age… and the atomic bomb.

After the war, and well into the 21st Century, we are treated to an amazing recovery of perhaps Gustav Mahler’s greatest song and with it, a tale of brutality beyond measure in an attempt to save it.
‘You possess an incredible wealth of material and know all the sources that could possibly consulted on the subject. It is important to ‘strike the right balance’ which is a question that is not so easily answered. To my mind, you have already succeeded – you made a choice – very dramatic – indeed: perhaps the most tragic – examples of the fates of Mahler’s family and friends’.

Andreas Michalek Internationale Gustav Mahler Gesellschaft

6th February 2015 0

Riding the Wind by Mereo Books

Albert Lewis-Roberts was born in Kimberley, South Africa, in 1896. Having distinguished himself at riding and shooting and on the sports field, he enlisted with the armed forces at the outbreak of the West African Campaign. But it was as a military pilot that ‘Bert’ became best known. He was commissioned into the Royal Flying Corps in 1917, serving under Head of Bomber Command Arthur ‘Bomber’ Harris and flying in combat at home and over the battlefields of Europe.

In Egypt and Palestine between the wars, he helped to pioneer the great transcontinental air routes and police the British Empire. He tested and developed many new and untried aircraft, and during the Second World War he helped to develop the Lancaster Bomber and to train airborne forces.

This fascinating account of a great pilot, complete with extracts from his highly entertaining letters home, has been written by his son-in-law, Robert Lawton.

6th February 2015 0
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