New Books

This is a feature, where CALH is going to highlight new books published in Cambridgeshire.  This is a chance for local authors to promote their new book online.  Hopefully as this webpage will feature a variety of books it will be a good place  to attract a wide number of books and authors.

Vanishing Cambridgeshire (3rd edition)

by Mike Petty

Vanishing Cambridgeshire: the great photographic survey

In 1924 a group of Cambridge Antiquarians set off on a journey into the unknown. They loaded their car with cameras, tripods and glassplate negatives. Their journey took them into a landscape of ancient remains, crumbling churches and dilapidated cottages where residents drank water from wells. While others explored the relics of ancient Egypt, these intrepid adventurers never strayed more than a few miles from the University town of Cambridge. For this was Cambridgeshire in the interwar years. The explorers – a printer, a doctor, an anatomist and a pathologist – were members of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society and were reviving a project that had begun at the start of the century. Their mission was to produce a photographic record of Cambridgeshire, to record both buildings and a way of life, the vanishing landmarks of a region.

Cambridgeshire historian Mike Petty has made a powerful selection of photographs from their pioneering survey to give an insight into a way of life that has disappeared. It includes at least one picture from every village in old Cambridgeshire and the Isle of Ely. Mike has also incorporated detailed captions based on contemporary newspaper stories featured in his ‘Looking Back’ columns in the Cambridge News. Many of the pictures have been copied from glass lantern slides that have never been seen since they were taken 60 years ago. Others have been developed from previously unprinted negatives. All are unique photographs many of which are now housed in the Cambridgeshire Collection.

Publication date: Summer 2010 3rd edition

Price: see below

ISBN: 978-1-85983-778-8

Available from: Derby Books Publishing Company or the hardback 208-page book costs £16.99 in shops. However you can get signed copies for £12.50  (postage £3 extra) from: Mike Petty, 13a Reads Street, Stretham, Ely, Cambs CB6 3JT. Phone 01353 648106 (mobile 078 55553784) or email mikepetty@tiscali.co.uk Website : www.cambridgeshirehistory.com/MikePetty

Ely through time

by Pamela Blakeman

Publication date: August 2010

Price: £14.99

ISBN: 978-1-848868-530-7

Available from: Amberley Publishing

For more information & the press release, please click here

Huntingdonshire through time

by Alan Akeroyd & Caroline Clifford

Publication date: September 2010

Price: £14.99

ISBN: 978-1-848868-713-4

Available from: Amberley Publishing

For more information & the press release, please click here

Cambridge Grocer

The story of Matthew's of Trinity Street 1832-1962

by Judy Wilson OBE

Publication date: October 19th 2010

Price: £12.99

ISBN: 978-1-874259-02-2

website:www.cambridgegrocer.com

Available from author & Heffers see below

For more information & order form, please click here

Cambridge at War

The diary of Jack Overhill 1939-1945

edited by Peter Searby

A radical, a novelist and a soldier for the working class, Jack Overhill's story has been tucked away under the dust of Cambridge's more romantic history since his death 20 years ago - until now.  Jack wrote over 20 novels, only three of which were published, about life in the poorer parts of Cambridge and was a relentless note-taker when it came to the life around him.

"His greatest legacy was keeping a diary, he started the diary in 1932 and was still writing it the year he died in 1989," says Chris Jakes from the Cambridgeshire Collection. 

Jack grew up with his father after his parents divorced when he was young, spent his early years working with his Dad as a cobbler and spent much of his life on Saxon Street in the Newtown area of the city.  Politically he was anything but passive: "He was a radical and had no time for the English establishment," adds Chris.

Jack was very precious about his work and his refusal to let publishers edit his material meant that not nearly enough was printed for the masses.

To listen to Chris Jakes full BBC interview on the diaries click here

Publication date: Summer 2010 (CRS Vol.19)

Price: £18.00 (£12 to Cambridgeshire Records Society Members)

ISBN: 978-0-904323-21-4

website:www.cambsrecordsociety.co.uk

Available from CRS & Cambridgeshire Archives

For more information & order form, please click here

All Saints, Landbeach

The story of a Fen Edge Church

by Ray Gambell

This book is a comprehensive photographic record of All Saints’ Church Landbeach, complemented by the informative and well researched supporting text.

The historic parish church of All Saints’ in the village of Landbeach stands out from the flat fen-edge landscape of Cambridgeshire and has been a place of worship and community life for some 900 years.

This is a small village, but the Rectors were for long the Masters or Fellows of Corpus Christi College in Cambridge, the Patrons since 1359.  Thus the story of this medieval church is surprisingly well documented, enriching the story of the church over the centuries reflected in many photographs of the furnishings and fittings still evident and those which have been removed elsewhere.

Publication date: December 2009

Price: £18.99

ISBN: 978-0-9562649-2-3

Published by : www.miltoncontact.com

Available from

Ray Gambell, The Old School, 2 Green End,

Landbeach, Cambridge CB25 9FD 01223 860757

For more information & order form, please click here

Cambridge Ghosts

by Robert Halliday & Alan Murdie

Cambridge Ghosts is a new book about ghosts, haunting and paranormal phenomena from the region.  Starting with a chapter on Cambridge College ghosts, it continues to describe city centre ghosts, followed by stories from the wider limits of the city, and concludes with ghost stories from the surrounding countryside, in such locations as the Old Vicarage at Grantchester, Sawston Hall, Madingley Hall and the Gog Magog Hills.  The authors have not just repeated known stories, but have included previously unpublished material, and made a critical re-examination of some of the better known local stories.  The book includes tributes to authors of supernatural fiction who were inspired by the history and traditions of Cambridge University, including Arthur Gray's tale of The Everlasting Club and Arthur Baker's College Mystery, set in Jesus College and Christ's College, as well as the greatest of all Cambridge ghost story writers, M. R. James, provost of King's College.

Publication date: October 2010.

Price £9-95p

ISBN 978-1-84549-453-7

Published by Arima Publishing www.arimapublishing.co.uk

Available from Heffers.

Firefighters of Cambridge

by David Bennett

Publication date: August 2010.

Price £16.99

ISBN 978-1-84868-954-1

Available from: Amberley Publishing

For more information & the press release, please click here

Cambridge's West Side Story:

Changes in the landscape of west Cambridge 1800-2000

by Philomena Guillebaud

This book puts together under one cover the five articles on the subject published between 2005 and 2009 in the Proceedings of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society, with a preface and index.

It describes the process of parliamentary enclosure in 1802-5 of the former Parish of St Giles, otherwise the old West Fields of Cambridge, and how certain colleges influenced the process in their favour. It traces the influence of the resulting land distribution on the development  of the town and the university over the subsequent 200 years.

Soft cover, 80 pp, illustrated

Price: £12.00

ISBN:

Available from: Copies available from the author, 26 Wilberforce Road, Cambridge CB3 0EQ.

Godmanchester:  A Celebration of 800 Years

by Pam and Dr Ken Sneath

In 1212 King John granted Godmanchester its first Charter and a measure of self-government. The year 2012 is therefore an important milestone in our history for it celebrates the 800th anniversary of the town.  Godmanchester: A celebration of 800 Years will be published by EAH PRESS of Cambridge in 2011.  A history of Godmanchester is long overdue.  The new history is wide ranging in its approach and covers not only the last eight hundred years but from Godmanchester’s beginnings way before the Romans arrived to the present day. It adopts a thematic approach focussing on the people of Godmanchester and the major subjects of social and economic history including the way they made their living, spent their leisure time and practised their religion.  The book includes a survey of the houses in which they lived and the important buildings of the town.

The authors are local residents Pam and Ken Sneath. Godmanchester was one of the towns that featured in Ken’s recent Ph.D. in social and economic history at the University of Cambridge. Pam’s focus is on the archaeology of the town.

Advanced subscribers to the forthcoming volume will contribute to funding of the enterprise and their support will be acknowledged in the list of subscribers in the book. Signed copies will be delivered to advanced subscribers on the day of publication. If you wish to become an advanced subscriber please complete the form by clicking here.

The advanced copy price is £9.95