The author has turned detective. In this book, he discovers the true identities behind the pseudonyms which Flora Thompson employed within her writing to hide the identity of the people and places she encountered 'beyond Candleford Green.' Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and George Bernard Shaw were two among many eminent people who were regular customers in her post office at Grayshott-unaware that the shy young lady sending their telegrams would one day rank alongside themselves on literary shelves. But the lesser-known characters also lend their own interest to the story. Who was 'Mr Foreshaw, '...

This is the first in a series of publications through which we intend to illustrate the history of the parish of Headley from different perspectives. In this book, we show some of the buildings, locations and features which have defined the character of the parish up to the middle of the twentieth century. In this book you are taken on a tour of the parish by means of three journeys -the first around the centre of Headley and Arford, the second to Headley Down and beyond, and the third along the River Wey and its tributaries. In doing so, we venture occasionally outside today's civil parish...

The pieces included in this book were written over a period of twelve years or so, and come from a variety of inspirations. The majority are short stories written for recreation and entered in competitions run by Writers News magazine. One (Jobsworth) is adapted from the first in a series of six radio plays written by the author about the mythical life of a caretaker. Marzipal is an outrageous fiction from a mundane real-life event. And others entries are verses written at different times and on various themes.

Although extracts from The Peverel Papers have been published previously, this is the first time they have been published in their entirety, in chronological sequence and in a single edition. It is a project which Flora herself wished to pursue just before her death, but never did so. Now, with the blessing of her granddaughter, we are pleased to bring that wish to fruition. They have been transcribed from the original Catholic Fireside magazines in which they were first published over the period 1921-27.

When Canadian troops arrived in Great Britain during the Second World War, they were given quarters in old, cold, damp barracks buildings in the military town of Aldershot. For these young men thousands of miles from home, and in many cases away from their families for the first time, it was a depressing experience. Imagine their joy then, when they found their next station in England was not another military camp, but a charming rural village with pubs, girls, dances - and a welcome for them from the local population. "All Tanked Up" is the story of their benign 'invasion' of a Hampshire...

In Lark Rise To Candleford and Heatherley Flora Thompson wrote the story of her Victorian country childhood and her youth in village post offices. She was sixty when she wrote her well-known books but she had spent a lifetime serving her apprenticeship as a naturalist and a writer. This biography tells the story of her life and her struggles as a writer. Flora Thompson's books opened windows on to the lost world of the hamlet, the village and small country towns.

It is not easy to record the history of a parish in a consistent manner, let alone to give an understandable picture of its progress through the centuries. Some information is no longer available, some is inconsistent, some is incomprehensible to the modern eye and mind, and always there is the feeling that such facts as we have are a mere snapshot, and a fairly random one at that, of fragments of the full picture. So we must take our hats off to Canon Tudor Jones who, at the end of his 30-year incumbency as rector of Headley, sat down to write "Headley 1066-1966," which is still the nearest...

These two plays, written by a local historian, tell the story of the Lark Rise to Candleford author in the days before she became famous. In Flora's Heatherley we see her in Grayshott (her Heatherley) at the age of 21 taking the position of sub-postoffice assistant, and staying for two and a half years. She arrived as a young, gauche, country girl, and passed "from foolish youth to wicked adolescence" in the village. She drew disapproval by associating with 'strange' men, and walking for miles alone on the surrounding heaths, and felt more at home having tea with a retired 'big-game' hunter,...

In September 1786, a lone sailor was murdered on Hindhead Common by three men. This much is common knowledge. But was the sailor alone? In his book The Broom-Squire, the Victorian author Sabine Baring-Gould imagines that the sailor was carrying a baby daughter, and that she had survived the ambush. From this point, he develops a story of the orphan girl found in the Devil's Punch Bowl by one of the broomsquires who lived there at the time. Eighteen years later, the finder and the foundling marry. But the circumstances and results of this union lead to a clash of wills - and more.

It is about 60 miles (or 95km) to walk from Guildford to Portsmouth Harbour, and it can be done. If, however, you would prefer to let the train take at least part of the strain, this book has divided the journey into manageable chunks which can be walked between railway stations. It also includes a circular walk or two from each of the stations on the way - and I couldn't resist the temptation to offer you a quick trip to the Isle of Wight too. The routes are described travelling towards the coast. There is no reason, of course, why you should not choose to walk in the opposite direction. In...