Böcker utgivna av Hobnob Press

Rebecca Smith, from Bratton near Westbury in Wiltshire, southern England, was the last woman in Britain to be hanged for infanticide of her own baby. She suffered her punishment at Devizes. But this unassuming woman who attended chapel and prayed night and morning, had poisoned not just one but eight of her babies. Her crime shocked and puzzled Victorian Britain. So why did she do it? Historian and journalist Sally Hendry delves into the nineteenth century to unpick Rebecca's story, looking at everything from domestic violence through to the unspeakable agonies of death by arsenic poisoning. Victim or villain? You decide.

It's the end of the 20th century and Blair's England is thriving - especially in the affluent south. And where could be a more delightful place to settle than the South-West, with the mellow elegance of Bath and the rural vista of its rivers, woods, and fields? People have owned and worked this land throughout centuries, before planes or pesticides, but to the migrant 'blow-ins' it's a peaceful backwater: internet entrepreneurs, ex-hippy wanderers, nature-loving city-dwellers, they've blown here like tumbleweed to follow their dreams in this painterly paradise. But life is not like art...

Six people with unconnected lives all make the same house in Blackberry Lane their home. From newly-wed Peggy with her film-star looks who lives in Two Blackberry Lane just after the end of World War Two, through the decades to reflective poetess, Chloe, whose family convert the property in the twenty-first century. Six stories of love, loss, hopes and dreams, jealousy, greed and the occasional strawberry flan. These compelling characters play out their lives within the walls of this cottage in the deepest Somerset countryside. But are their histories linked in more ways than they will ever know?

Cambridge graduate Will Barry is an idealistic young man who runs a prosperous, hundred acre farm, inherited from his father, in the Wiltshire village of Sandy Barrow. He has a firm belief in the power of education to enrich the lives of the villagers and has built a school on his land, where he teaches the labourers' children basic literacy, with the help of his sister Lucy. He offers the villagers free use of the library he has created at the school and holds evening meetings to discuss literature, religion and politics.Sir Roger Wanley, who was a close friend of Will's father, owns most of the land on which the village stands and Will grew up playing with the squire's two eldest children, Richard and Maria. It is assumed that one day Will and Maria will marry.In the autumn of 1641 as the rift between King Charles I and his Parliament widens, Will can see faults on both sides and supports a middle way. He is caught between Squire Wanley, who is loyal to the King and his Puritan friends, who support Parliament. Both sides accuse him of having a foot in both camps and try to win him over. When war breaks out the following year, a dogmatic decision by Wanley forces Will to take the opposite side, breaking with the Wanley family and yielding to pressure from some of the villagers to lead them to join the Parliamentary army.The experience of nine months of fighting in Devon and Cornwall and a violent event back in Sandy Barrow, which includes a betrayal by someone he trusted, shatters his life and all he has worked for. Events culminate in a denouement on the downs, just before the Battle of Roundway and the necessity to withstand a tense siege in Devizes Castle. A wealth of local characters and their relationships weave a colourful tapestry set against the febrile atmosphere of a civil war.

William Guise, later Sir William Guise, 5th Baronet of Elmore, travelled in Switzerland and Italy in 1764 in the company of Edward Gibbon, the historian. Two journals chronicling in great detail the first part of their tour, from Lausanne to Florence, Rome and other Italian cities, and the cultural sites and artefacts that they saw, have survived in the archives of Elmore Court, Gloucestershire, which was the Guise family home. Despite their historic and cultural interest, there has until now been no full transcription of these journals (totalling 83,000 words) apart from some references to them in an edition of Gibbon's diaries. As well as perceptive comments and opinions on the architecture, statues, pictures and other works of art which they saw, there are extensive references to military matters and fortifications; to the politics and governance of the towns of Northern Italy and to travel and lodging issues. The journals illustrate the serious nature of the Grand Tour as undertaken by Guise and his better known travelling companion, Edward Gibbon.

The authors take a fresh approach to the telling of Mary Sidney's fascinating story. She was a remarkable woman who spent a significant part of her life at Wilton House. Married at the age of fifteen to one of England's richest men, she was close to Queen Elizabeth I. As she lived at a time of political and religious change, her story is told against that background. The untimely death of her beloved brother, the courtier and poet, Sir Philip Sidney, altered the course of her life. Mary Sidney became a trend-setter, forging a pathway for women writers: a talented poet, a skilful translator and editor and an influential patron of the arts. She wrote a version of Antony and Cleopatra. Her metrical psalms inspired poets, including a distant relative, George Herbert. Her legacy is traced to the wider world and the poetry of New England. Closer to home her relationship to key figures of the day is explored: James I, William Shakespeare and Edmund Spenser, to name a few. Mary Sidney Herbert's contribution to literature has never been sufficiently acknowledged but this book redresses that neglect and offers an engaging insight into an influential woman's life.

This is the second book of poetry by Pete Gage, blues musician and former vocalist with Dr Feelgood, following 'Fifty-Six Poems' published by Hobnob Press in 2021. It is a collection of a further 44 poems from the hundreds he has written over 60 years, complemented by an equal number of his owncolour photographs. Spread throughout the book are seven sections of a long poem dedicated to his great friend, the esteemed water-colourist David Evans, who was tragically killed in 1987 whilst cycling near his home in Suffolk. The 'Gerontius' in the title of each section is represented by David himself, who moves along his own spiritual journey in death, as in Elgar's 'The Dream of Gerontius'. The author lives in Frome, Somerset, where he is a well known and respected performer on the local musical scene.

Wiltshire is particularly lucky in the variety and quality of its chapels, which range from tiny country meeting houses of traditional gable-ended design to large town churches with Classical facades and space for 1000 or more worshippers in their galleried interiors. This book documents them. Introductory chapters describe the development of nonconformity in the county and the way chapel design has evolved in the three centuries since the first were built. These are followed by a gazetteer describing each of the almost 500 chapels still standing, with details of their appearance and history. With over 250 photographs in addition to the authoritative text, this book provides the definitive guide to the history and design of these fascinating buildings.

The River Nadder in Wiltshire rises in the Donheads, east of Shaftesbury, and flows through the Vale of Wardour to Wilton, where it joins the Wylye and then, at Salisbury, the Avon. This remarkable social and landscape history, beautifully illustrated, presents the story of every village and settlement in its valley, drawn from historical sources and oral reminiscence, and lovingly presented by the author of Little Imber on the Down, and Collett's Farthing Newspaper. First published in 1995, Rex Sawyer revised Nadder in 2006, and it was published in a new format and with many extra illustrations. Long unavailable, this print-on-demand reprint will make it accessible to a new generation of readers.

A Higher Reality, by John Chandler tells the story of England's largest and (arguably) most important nunnery, and of the town that grew up alongside it. King Alfred established Shaftesbury and its abbey on a Dorset hilltop in the late ninth century. His community of nuns became the model for other royal nunneries and a focus for the veneration of a murdered king, Edward the Martyr. It was supported by large, wealthy estates in Dorset, Wiltshire and further afield, and its church and monastic buildings were rebuilt on a massive scale around 1100. The medieval town of Shaftesbury prospered at the abbey gates, and became an important centre of trade and communications. Following its dissolution in 1539 the abbey was demolished, and almost all trace of it was lost until archaeological excavations began on its site in the nineteenth century. The town, however, renewed itself with stone from the abbey and has continued as an attractive and flourishing community. It enjoys one of the most striking and beautiful settings of any English town, and the site of its abbey church - its foundations exposed within a peaceful garden - has become a popular attraction for visitors and residents. John Chandler's book was commissioned by the Friends of Shaftesbury Abbey to accompany the new museum opened on the site in 1999. It offers an absorbing and wide-ranging history of the abbey, its saint, its buildings and estates, the devotional and cultural life of its nuns, its downfall and rediscovery. There is much too about the origins and development of the town of Shaftesbury, including a guided walk in search of its history. Although intended for a popular readership the text is fully referenced with an extensive bibliography and a comprehensive index, which will prove invaluable to students of monastic and urban history. First published in 2003 it is now reissued as a print-on-demand paperback.

The life of Dr Edward Thomas Wilson of Cheltenham has never been told. Overshadowed both by his son, the Antarctic explorer who perished with Captain Scott at the South Pole, and his brother, renowned for his heroic attempt to rescue General Gordon at Khartoum, his story is intriguingly complex. A municipal pioneer of Victorian and Edwardian Britain, he instigated modern medical practices, such as isolation fever hospitals, district nursing and clean drinking water. A supporter of science and art he opened the museum which now bears his family's name, and promoted libraries and the local School of Art. A founder of the local camera club (the sixth oldest in the country) he pioneered photomicrography as an amateurs' pursuit, and contributed to numerous associations, not least as President of the Cheltenham Natural Science Society. 'No man has done so much as he to stimulate and promote the intellectual life of the town' proclaimed one of his obituaries in 1918, while the epitaph on his gravestone reads simply, 'He went about doing good'. Drawing on previously unpublished material and sources, this is the first in-depth biography of one of life's 'quiet' heroes.

This book is a result of the remarkable vision and creativity of the Swindon writer George Ewart Hobbs (1883-1946). Hobbs, whose life and works are also explored in A Swindon Wordsmith (published in 2019) and A Swindon Radical (2021), worked full-time as an engineer with the GWR, for more than half a century, but was still a prolific writer, across a dazzling range of (fiction and nonfiction) subjects. A Visit to Venus was originally serialised in the Swindon Advertiser, and although it is not his only work of science fiction, it is the longest and most ambitious, made all the more remarkable by the fact that it was written in 1927, when the genre was in its infancy. With its believable characters and the philosophical and theological questions it raises, A Visit to Venus sits alongside other quality (but much later) examples of the genre in its purest form, most notably Star Trek, boldly dealing with what science fiction is always about in the end: man's solitude. Because this is a story seeking not just what's out there, but rather what's inside us.

Welcome to a book that was never intended. After all, when A Swindon Wordsmith was published in 2019, highlighting the life and works of railwayman and parttime writer George Ewart Hobbs, the authors were satisfied that it achieved both of their main aims: showcasing work by someone who had undeservedly been forgotten since his death in 1946, but also opening a fascinating window on Swindon in times gone by. However, the surprise discovery of more works by George made it necessary to produce a second volume, and this book therefore samples some of the articles he wrote and published in the 1920s and 1930s, mostly in the Swindon Advertiser. Like its predecessor, this new book covers a wide range of George's interests, including religion, philosophy, astronomy, spiritualism, engineering and more. And as he came to terms with a changing world at home, and as the world spiralled towards the second declaration of global war in his lifetime, it chronicles the views of an increasingly radical thinker, who was always ahead of his time. Along with a simultaneously published companion book, A Visit to Venus (George's 1927 science fiction tale), A Swindon Radical completes the story of this fascinating wordsmith and free-thinker.

Bishopstone with Little Hinton Parish was formerly two parishes - Bishopstone and Hinton. They are in north-east Wiltshire on land which has a long and varied history that spans over 12,000 years of human activity. The two authors have for many years trod the fields and byways of the parish searching for evidence of man's impact on the landscape and the artefacts they have left behind. This book records for present and future generations their discoveries and those of others within the parish - from prehistoric flint tools to deserted medieval villages and long-lost water mills.

This collection of 37 stories, on themes ranging through love and loss, betrayal, passion and the complexity of human relationships between lovers and family members, has been selected from the author's long career of writing short stories. Most have been previously published in magazines or edited collections, or been presented on radio or as live readings. The author is a Frome based poet, novelist, dramatist and critic.

This book, fully colour illustrated, tells the fascinating story of Bruton, a small town in Somerset, England, and its environs from the earliest times to the present day. An important ecclesiastical centre since the seventh century, notable individuals in Bruton's history include Sir John Fitzjames, standard bearer serving three monarchs and a co-founder of Bruton's free grammar school, Stephan Batman, an eminent Tudor author and cleric, Sir Hugh Sexey, the town's great benefactor, and Gabriel Felling and Ernst Blensdorf, two of its most admired artist-craftsmen. R. D. Blackmore, author of Lorna Doone was schooled in Bruton and, for most of 1959, it was home to the great American novelist, John Steinbeck. The lives of ordinary folk raising families, working on the land and in the town's mills, are revealed in a host of parochial records and in the fabric of the buildings in which they lived and worked, prayed and played.

The Cotswold village of Colesbourne straddles the picturesque valley of the River Churn, as it descends from Seven Springs to Cirencester. Since the 1780s, the historic Colesbourne Estate has been in the ownership of the Elwes family. It was Henry John Elwes who in the 1870s began Colesbourne's now world-famous snowdrop collection. In this new account, Sir Henry Elwes, who served from 1992 to 2010 as Her Majesty's Lord-Lieutenant of Gloucestershire, draws on unique estate and family archives to paint a vivid picture of a community that saw many changes in the 20th century, yet still thrives today. A fascinating blend of local and personal histories, the book is profusely illustrated, many of the images being published here for the first time.

Spring 1860 in a lonely corner of Montana, four people are seeking fulfilment in their lives and some form of healing for troubled minds. Bear Claw, the Cheyenne warrior, whose mother was the daughter of a Jewish pedlar, is searching for a way to reconcile his life as a Cheyenne with his promise to his mother to honour the traditions of her people. Ben Barnett, the youngest son of a Wiltshire squire has emigrated with his young wife Frances in the hope of finding a cure for his depression and restless spirit in the challenge of a pioneering life. Frances however, longs for a more secure, civilised life with her relatives in Boston. Lothar Klein dreams of becoming a rich man and being accepted in the upper ranks of European society and has travelled from Germany believing he will find gold in America. When the lives of these four people intersect a chain of events is set in motion that reaches a dramatic conclusion. The story is set against the background of the dangers and hardships of living in an untamed landscape and the often fraught relationship between the white settlers and the native population, but also how an individual friendship can transcend differences in race and culture. The life and traditions of the Cheyenne are portrayed in detail at a time when the Plains tribes still had the freedom to live in their own way before they were swept aside by the irresistible force of the believers in Manifest Destiny.

In November 1915 the Chippenham Red Cross Convalescent Hospital opened in response to rapidly increasing numbers of wounded men returning from the battlefields of the Great War. This book follows events in Chippenham, a relatively small north Wiltshire town, that led to the opening of the Hospital. It describes in detail the people of the district who gave so many hours to care for the patients and make them feel welcome in the town. Inevitably there is sadness but also joy, the recurring theme is of a 'Happy Home Hospital'. The Hospital changed the lives of both staff and patients and this book follows some of those changes after the Armistice. Profusely illustrated in colour, the book derives from a highly successful exhibition mounted by staff and volunteers of Chippenham Museum and, although concerned principally with the hospital, it chronicles many other apects of the town and its people through a devastating war.

The borough of Swindon embraces not only one of the largest towns in central southern England; it includes also large tracts of chalk downland and much of the upper Thames valley. The rapid pace of development across this area has resulted in a wealth of important archaeological discoveries, from earliest prehistory to the recent past. Bernard Phillips, author of this profusely illustrated survey, has played a leading part in excavating and understanding Swindon's archaeology over more than fifty years, and so is able to bring to his subject a unique authority, making this the indispensable handbook to the evolution of a region now home to almost a quarter of a million people.