New books

I have four new history books out this month which I hope you will find interesting. The first is, 'Images of Plymouth : Stonehouse' (Driftwood Coast Publishing) which features a history of Stonehouse together with many old photos from the early 1900s. I've tried to include as much as I can within its pages and some of the things covered include prehistory, the Romans, Stonehouse Bridge, Transport, Union Street, the Palace Theatre, Durnford Street etc. It also features people with a connection to the area like Vice Admiral Hardy, Robert Falcon Scott, Harry Houdini, Charles Darwin and even Benny Hill.

Talking of Harry Houdini, my second book features his appearances around the UK in the early 1900s and is called 'Houdini : the British Tours' (Driftwood Coast Publishing). It features the recorded appearances of Houdini in Britain between 1900 and 1920 and tells of his amazing stunts, his leaps in chains from bridges, his challenges, his imitators and his rivals etc. It features many photos together with newspaper reports of the day which help to bring the stories of Houdini's many tours of Britain alive. Regular readers of this blog will know that Houdini appeared in Plymouth and there's an interesting section about this within the book.

The third book is, 'Plymouth at War Through Time' (Amberley Publishing). You may have read some of my other Through Time books. This one features old photos from the Second World War together with colour photos of the same area today. I love the look of these books and think that the idea works really well.

The fourth book is 'A 1970s Childhood' (History Press) which tells what it was like growing up in the 1970s. It features the fashions, the music, the tv, sweets, the strikes, school and much more.

All books are available from Waterstones, Smiths and all  the normal outlets and also online at Amazon, Tesco, Foyles etc.

I hope that you'll enjoy them very much. There are also more books to come from Amberley but I'll write about them later.