Local History

East Ham was sparsely inhabited in the fourteenth century and had not changed much with the advent of the railway in the 1850s. Farmers and market ...

Hodges Figgis Book of the Year 2023 Maps are essential tools in finding our way around, but they also tell stories and are great depositories of i...

The Berkshire town of Wokingham has over 1,000 years of history, and this history is interwoven with the bigger story of England. Underneath the ve...

Warrington is a twentieth-century New Town with a history stretching back to prehistoric times. Behind the present-day streetscape of a thriving Ch...

The landscape, buildings and people of Kent have provided inspiration for writers for centuries. Whether the writers were natives of the county its...

Set in the heart of England, the undulating county of Warwickshire is famous as the birthplace of William Shakespeare. He was born in Stratford-upo...

Lincolnshire is a county of contrasts, ranging from the seaside resorts on the east coast to the rolling chalk hills of the Lincolnshire Wolds and ...

The River Lea and its crossing at Hertford lie at the heart of the town's history. Before the Norman Conquest the river formed a natural boundary b...

London has been transformed in the last two or three decades since the 1990s. Large areas have been rebuilt and regenerated and exciting new buildi...

Everybody loves stories and Scotland is full of them. Every town, village, glen, loch, nook and cranny has a tale to tell and its these stories tha...

'Peculiarly hilarious!' - William Gibson'Every page is a pleasure' - Lindsey FItzharris'Utterly charming' - Tom Holland'Laugh-out-loud' - Garth Nix...

Bath Abbey contains the largest collection of monuments in any UK church or cathedral. But how did the ruined Abbey of 1539 become a Georgian galle...

County Cork is the largest county in Ireland, with a heritage that has been recorded, celebrated and commemorated over many centuries. This book ex...

Stratford developed at the lowest crossing point of the River Lea and was a strategic gateway to London. Part of the Essex parish of West Ham, its ...

This is the extraordinary story of how salt fish from Shetland became one of the staple foods of Europe, powered an economic boom and inspired arti...

The wonderful town of Bury St Edmunds is indelibly linked to the first patron saint of England, St Edmund, who was martyred in AD 869 and would eve...

Peterborough grew up around its cathedral, originally founded as an Anglo-Saxon monastery, but it was only in the nineteenth century that this city...

Southampton has been a major port on the south coast of England since the Norman Conquest, when it was a significant departure route for trade to N...

The paranormal history of Buckinghamshire is brought vividly to life in this, the first dedicated guide to the haunted and uncanny sites of this mo...

The borough of Newham in East London was largely built up from the 1800s onwards. Early industry on the river included tide mills and the Royal Doc...

Acclaimed historian Alistair Moffat sets off in the footsteps of the Highland clans and their definitive conflicts. In twelve journeys he explores ...

Deptford royal dockyard was established in the early 16th century and closed in 1869. Crucial to the maintenance of the nations naval power, the do...