Derby to Chesterfield

You can't really be a rail enthusiast, especially if you are Midlands based, and not be familiar with Derby railway station. I go quite a lot (indeed i went last week). 

This book covers the Midland Main Line between Derby and Chesterfield (of twisty church spire fame) in the usual Middleton Press style crafted by Vic Mitchell and Keith Smith.

A history and map of each station along the line (some stations having now been closed) is presented along with a number of images, historical and (fairly) modern day, showing how the stations have evolved and what kind of trains you might see at them.

The book covers Duffield, Belper and Ambergate along the way which are all still open and stations i am very familiar with and it was nice to learn more about the stations' histories. Another interesting Middleton Press volume.

Derby

Belper

Ambergate

Chesterfield

Judy Annual 1979

Judy was a DC Thomson comic released between 1960 and 1991 when it merged with another comic called Mandy (nearly all British comics aimed at girls seemed to have been named after girls!) This annual from 1979 is classic fare aimed at keeping children entertained over Christmas.

It includes a number of comic stories. Unlike boy's comic stories which usually involved war, space and especially war in space, the stories in Judy cover areas like the supernatural, school adventures and family drama. To be honest a welcome change from endless alien invasions.

The real fun in this annual though is the other stuff. The lives of Roger de Courcey and Rod Hull are hilariously dramatised in comic form. There is also a rather strange feature on the National Exhibition Centre!

A fascinating look at a very different age.

Gothic Pursuit

Another of the Tim Simpson series of stories by John Malcolm mixing art and furniture history with amateur detective work. 

In this story the hunt for a rare piece of furniture designed by a well known 19th century architect leads to a number of murders.

A fun and easy read on the whole and a well structured story, though sometimes the art and design history can make your eyes glaze over a bit (and i like history!) However, the crime itself and the sleuthing are very enjoyable.

The Leyland National

If the Daimler Fleetline is my favourite double-decker bus, the Leyland National is my favourite single decker. The bus was developed by Leyland and the National Bus Company as a standard bus to replace huge fleets of ageing buses. Although the National was not without some problems, it did become a great success with thousands built and serving well into the 2000s.

This book is a collection of scores of photographs of the National hard at work with many different bus companies, the National Bus Company themselves and many others. If you like Leyland Nationals (as i do) then there are many photos here to enjoy.

So, that all seems great of course but there is a problem with the book in that the selection is a bit all over the place. The book might be better if there was more of a theme followed. That is a small criticism though. This is a lovely collection of photographs of one of the best buses.

How about a few photographs i have taken of Nationals?

A trip to Colwall

At the weekend i headed over to the other side of the Malvern hill from Malvern itself to the Herefordshire village of Colwall. I did venture into the footpaths and nature reserve near the station though it was a bit muddy to be honest, i need to come back in the Summer and venture further on. Colwall is a nice village that is well worth a visit. You can see my photos here.

Jinty Volume 1: Land of No Tears/The Human Zoo

Two collected comic serials from the 1970s science-fiction comic for girls Jinty. The two stories are quite different in some ways but similar in others, both recount the adventures of heroines who start off rather annoyingly but who win us over as they struggle after being thrown into very difficult and dangerous new worlds.

In the Land of No Tears, written by Pat Mills and drawn by Guy Peeters, our heroine is Casey. She is a disabled schoolgirl who cynically takes advantage of her disability to get her own way. She actually doesn't want an operation to correct her leg but when it does happen something goes wrong and she is transported into a future dystopia. Here she finds herself in a land of extreme body fascism where any disfigurement or imperfection causes revulsion and even fear. Casey finds herself a Gamma girl, brutally repressed by the superior Alpha girls, especially the vicious Perfecta. Casey helps bring together a group of fellow Gammas to challenge the supremacy of the Alphas in a sporting contest.

This is followed by The Human Zoo by Malcolm Shaw and again drawn by Peters. This is an alien abduction story which uses the set-up to hammer home a pretty overt animal rights message. Twin sisters  Shona and Jenny are taken to an alien planet where they are considered no more than any other animal and are exhibited and exploited in a zoo! The girls suffer many obstacles, including experimentation and being hunted, as they try and prove to the aliens that they are thinking, feeling creatures too.

Both stories are very well written and drawn and highly enjoyable classic science-fiction tales, using a futuristic setting to comment on our present day. As these were originally published in weekly episodes there is some repetition but that doesn't get too much in the way.

F-102 Delta Dagger Units

The first of the Convair delta wing fighters, the F-102 Delta Dagger served as an interceptor for the USAF between 1956 and 1976. The F-102 was at the bleeding edge at the time of it's development in the early 1950s. The F-102 was intended to be a supersonic interceptor, equipped with radar and a fire control system and shoot down Soviet bombers with the first air-to-air missiles.

Unfortunately, the prototype was underwhelming. It could not achieve supersonic flight but a redesign of the fuselage and wing did bring about the desired performance and eventually 1,000 were built. The F-102 was ultimately eclipsed by Convair's follow-on the F-106 Delta Dart but the F-102 had a solid career. As well as guarding against Soviet bombers it also saw some action in the Vietnam War, often it roles for which it was not designed.

A good book about an aircraft type which is sometimes overlooked these days. This has the usual mixture of informative text, illustrations and photographs of an Osprey publication.

The Case of Alan Copeland

A courtroom drama can be a good read, this book by Moray Dalton offers a pretty riveting one too though you need to wait for it.

This is a small village drama set in the Interwar Period. A lot of time is spent establishing various characters in the village. You certainly can say the characters are well fleshed out, though unfortunately few of the characters are that sympathetic especially the leads!

The book has a slow start but builds to an excellent climax. You just need a bit of patience and it will be worth it.

British Army Ambulance Trains

Another niche transport (and military!) topic maybe, but a very worthwhile topic indeed. This fascinating book tells the tale of ambulance trains used by the British Army. The story goes back to the mid-19th century and continued in one form or the other until the end of the Cold War. 

With a wealth of imagery (though more from earlier decades, as the book states - imagery of ambulance trains from the First World War outnumber the Second by quite some margin due to the popularity of picture postcards at the time) and informative text, this book covers the topic very well. The book is easily worth an entry in any transport or military book collection.

Well i have both.

Churches of Warwickshire (6) : St Peter, Wootton Wawen

St Peter in Wootton Wawen is Warwickshire's oldest church and one of the county's oldest free standing buildings. Parts of the tower are of Saxon origin, dating from the 11th century or earlier. However, much of the current church dates from the 12 and 13th centuries with the nave and chancel being rebuilt from the original state. Other additions like the porch were added later on in the following centuries.

The church contains a well preserved example of chancel screen-work, regarded as the best preserved in the county, and chancel seats dating from the 16th century. The oak pulpit is of a similar vintage as are a number of monumental brasses.

The original church was destroyed sometime in the late 10th century or early 11th. The current church of St Peter was established by the Anglo-Danish landowner Wagen (Wawen). Although a number of other stone churches were built in the late Saxon era Warwickshire, only St Peter's church retains any substantial masonry from that time.

A trip to Redditch

Due to bad weather at the weekend and some personal stuff getting in the way, my weekend rail adventure was pretty modest and on a Sunday too! I went to Redditch which is the station at the very end of my local line. It is in Worcestershire so i was able to update my photographs of that station for my next book. I also had a walk around the town.

You can see my photos here.

Athenian Hoplite versus Spartan Hoplite

The hoplite is one of the most famous parts of ancient Greek warfare, ranks or phalanxes of warriors armed with a long spear and protected by a large shield. This book describes the struggles between the two most powerful Greek city states, Athens and Sparta, during the Peloponnesian War.

The book describes the organisation, training and equipment of the hoplites of the two sides and how they matched up in a number of battles. The book is full of good information and lavishly illustrated with photographs of ancient Greek statues and vases and modern day illustrations and diagrams.

Telephone Service Vehicles Since 1906

Oh, this is superbly niche. This wonderful little book covers the road vehicles used by the General Post Office Telephone arm and later British Telecom after privatisation. 

Bill Aldridge has collected together vehicles from the earliest days of telephony to (close to anyway) the present. Some of the vehicles are highly specialised and can be a bit wacky and wonderful. Others are superbly mundane. Nostalgia is guaranteed.

A brilliant book.

Dennis the Menace Annual 1974

As with the Bash Street Kids, Dennis the Menace also got his own annual for many years which collected together old comic strips along with new custom made material. 

Despite the appearance of Gnasher on the cover, he does not appear in any of the comic strips (though does in the extra material) which means that the stories pre-date 1968 as that is when Gnasher first appeared in the Dennis comic strip.

The stories are fun, though can be a big repetitive. Dennis gets into trouble and causes mayhem, and the story usually ends with him being beaten - often in a rather strange manner, such as by an elephant! 

It can get a bit samey after awhile (which is why the Bash Street Kids collected stories work better in annual form), of course not a problem when the stories were originally published as you had a week's wait between them!

Its still a fun read.

Britain's Railways in the 1970s

More railway nostalgia. If i had a time machine i would go back to the 1970s and take about a million photographs with my digital camera of British Rail during that decade (and then probably go and see Julius Caesar or something). Unfortunately, no one has invented such a device yet so instead this excellent book by David Hayes will suffice.

Many excellent photographs, most of them in colour, are well re-produced here. All the favourites are here, the Class 25s, 26s, 40s, 86s. It is a British Rail scene i was just about to experience in the early 1980s before it all changed for good.

A wonderful book.

The Radioactive Camel Affair

Number 7 in the novel tie-in services to the popular TV show The Man from U.N.C.L.E. I haven't read the first six or any of the seventeen (!) following novels. Yet anyway.

I can't really remember much about the show but was familiar enough with the characters of the show with the unwieldily acronyms to get into the book straight away. In this story the evil organisation THRUSH are stealing plutonium and our UNCLE heroes Napoleon Solo and Ilya Kuryakin are sent to find out whats going on.

The rather mysterious title of the book stems from the cunning THRUSH plan to transport the plutonium to their secret base in Sudan by caravan. Solo follows the trail while Kuryakin follows other leads. And much of the book is taken up by what feels like an endless romp through the desert. It does get a bit dull at times.

Fear not, the action hots up at the end when we get to the SEKRIT THRUSH base complete with nuclear reactor in a cave and nuclear missiles hidden under bushes. Well of course! If the desert part of the book could have been shortened somewhat it would have been all so much better but as it is the book isn't bad. Total campy 1960s secret agent nonsense of course but enjoyable.

Two more books commissioned

I am happy to announce that Amberley have commissioned me to write two more books for them. My second and third are due out next year, i suspect book 4 may be out at the end of 2027 and book 5 some time in 2028.

Both books will continue my series on railway stations. Book 4 will be on the railway stations of Herefordshire and Worcestershire, nice parts of the world (Hereford station can be seen below). Book 5 will be on the stations of the North Downs Line between Reading and Redhill via Guildford so including some lovely sights in Berkshire, Hampshire and Surrey.

I have until November next year to submit book 4 but i have made a start with updating my photography already.

London Terminal Stations in the 1960s

I wish i had been around in the 1960s and able to witness (and photograph) the fast changing railway scene during that decade (mind you i'd be at least twenty years older than i am now so would probably be a physical wreck). This superb collection of all colour photographs will suffice instead. David Christie took photographs at some of the London termini during the 1960s. He captured the end of steam in the capital and the arrival of the new diesels (of course these are mostly gone now too!)

Although the book does concentrate on steam, there are quite a few diesels too. I would have liked to see a few multiple units too but thats fine, other books are available. 

This is an excellent collection of photographs capturing a now long-lost scene. I agree with the author, Flying Scotsman did look better in LNER green. I had the Hornby model as a kid like that, a few months ago i did see the real thing. Still looks pretty good of course!

Grumman F-14 Tomcat

Let us go a bit Top Gun with this entry in the Haynes expanded universe of workshop manuals. The Grumman F-14 Tomcat was an iconic US Navy fighter now retired (though still in service with the Iranian Air Force - to an extent anyway). As with other Haynes manuals this includes a history of the type, it's operational service history and how the Tomcat was built and held together.

The Tomcat is an interesting example of an aircraft that was already a star even before Tom Cruise first climbed into the cockpit of one for the famous film and it is easy to see why. The Tomcat was the last hot US Navy jet fighter. The Hornet, Super Hornet and JSF are worthy and fine of course but they lack the Tomcat's pizzazz.

A very nice book for an undoubted icon.

A trip to Worcester's stations

I have been given the go-ahead by my publisher for my fourth book which will be on the railway stations of Herefordshire and Worcestershire. I have a year before i need to submit it but need to get on with updating my photography and at the weekend i visited all three (if you include Parkway) of Worcester's railway stations. It was also an opportunity to test out my new iPhone as well.

To be honest i wasn't that happy with a lot of the photos i took, especially at Foregate Street because the low sun was pretty troublesome but i have plenty of time to come back and take some more! You can see the photos i did take here.

The Big Bow Mystery

The Big Bow Mystery by Israel Zangwill is a fine little mystery, one of the earliest locked room detective stories, a sub-genre of crime stories where an impossible crime has apparently taken place and the detective begins to unravel this baffling case. 

The joy of these kinds of stories (which were very popular in the Interwar Period) is the journey as much as the actual crime as we follow the detective who investigates the scenario thoroughly, applying logical reasoning to make the impossible actually possible.

Once you get to the conclusion in this story (which can be hard work at times, the story does drag a bit) it is undoubtably interesting though maybe (spoiler alert) a bit of a cheat. (The detective did it, the victim was still alive when he broke the door open). The use of psychology is clever however.

An interesting bit of late Victorian social comment and satire.

'D' For Diesels : 8

As with other titles in this series, this book presents a good and varied collection of black & white photos from the early days of British Rail "modern traction", specifically from the days before TOPS numbers and the diesels were largely (though not always) green (not that it really matters in a book of black & white photos of course!) 

The photographs are often very good though and accompanied by captions written in a conversational style, often pithy (though sometimes it does fall a bit flat).

This volume mainly features the photos of Gavin Morrison and covers the whole range of British Rail diesels from lowly shunters to large main line locomotives. The photos are mainly taken in the 1960s and show a rail network and indeed a Britain before the ravages of standardisation and corporate identities.

Maybe everything was all a bit simpler and more innocent back then but nostalgia, like everything else, is not like it used to be.

Airport Buses

I like a book on a nice narrow transport niche me. So, how about a book about buses and the bus routes which serve Britain's airports? Well yes please, this is a great little book with a great variety of buses, routes and services ranging from buses which provide public transport links to airports to buses operated by airports themselves and their associated businesses.

Keith A Jenkinson has bought together a good mixture here. My only real criticism of the book is that he spelt Erdington wrong in the introduction, though i did find that quite amusing. All airports big and small are covered, and all parts of the United Kingdom.

The best entries are on some of the specialised buses operated by airports themselves. Some of the vehicles developed for these very specific uses are quite fascinating sometimes.

The Limbo Line

Spy dramas usually fall into two camps. The over-the top but entertaining nonsense of James Bond and it's ilk or the tense high stakes Cold War dramas by John Le Carre and similar. Unfortunately, The Limbo Line by Victor Canning tends to fall between these two camps, and it can sometimes be a little dull.

The Soviets are running a scheme where low-profile defectors are snatched in the West and taken back to the Worker's Paradise they obviously were foolish to leave. Retired agent Manston is bought in by the secret services in a plan to uncover and destroy the Soviet network carrying out these operations. They do this with the lure of ex-Soviet ballerina Irina, who is next on the Soviet's list.

Manston starts to fall for Irina, and has misgivings about letting her be kidnapped so they can follow the trail, which will lead them to smash the scheme. Everything does not follow smoothly, the Soviets led by Oleg are a tough lot and the ageing Manston doesn't quite have his wits as he used to.

This isn't a bad book and indeed can be a perfectly decent Cold War espionage drama at times but the low overall stakes (though pretty high for Manston and Irina of course) and the slightly repetitive nature of the plot can make the book a bit of a chore at times. Luckily the two main characters are both very likeable and so you care what happens to them. This helps keeps you interested to the end.

A trip to Saunderton and Horsenden

I returned to Princes Risborough (again) at the weekend. I have been there quite a lot this year (so you can probably guess that i really like this part of the world). This time i wanted to visit the villages/hamlets of Saunderton and Horsenden which are contiguous with Princes Risborough itself. I visited two churches and saw some nice countryside. There were also some steam engines operating on the Chinnor & Princes Risborough Railway, which is always nice.

You can see my photos here.

The Mansions of the Gods

A highpoint in the Asterix series, a book that takes takes on the rural-urban divide, environmental destruction (in the name of progress and urbanisation) and the corruption of "civilisation" on traditional cultures with typically sharp Asterix satire. A book like this truly shows the magic of Asterix and other European comics of the same quality, its a multi-layed story with slapstick and humour, irony and social comment that can be enjoyed on many levels and by all ages.

Caesar has decided the way to defeat the indomitable Gauls is not by military might but to force them to accept Roman civilisation. This is to be achieved cutting down the forest around their village and building a Roman town in its place...

At first the Roman attempts to build this new town are opposed by Gaulish strength and Getafix's magic, but then the Gauls decide to let the Romans build a little in order to get the slave workforce released. One apartment block is built and some new Roman tenants move in. That is when the trouble starts, the Gauls begin to be seduced by the trappings of Roman civilisation and the capitalist opportunities that arise, old friendships begin to be soured by the taint of wealth. Can the fabric of the village be restored before it all falls apart and the forest is gone?

The book is very cleverly written and beautifully drawn. The "evils" of urbanisation, capitalism and progress are slightly overblown (and it is one of the most politicial Asterix books, maybe matched only by the capitalist satire Obelix & Co.) but i am sure will strike a chord with many of us.

Minibus Mania

From the earliest days of the motorbus, there has also been a need for a small bus for routes with light traffic. However, the minibus really came of age in the 1970s and 1980s, especially after bus deregulation as a new wave of operators sought to open up new routes and services including demand responsive buses such as dial-a-bus schemes.

Many of those buses are collected in this excellent book by Malcolm Batten which offers a nostalgic, but slightly different to usual, look at British buses in the latter decades of the 20th century. The buses are varied, many based on vans such as the Ford Transit. Even some ex-London taxis were used as minibuses in one location!

A great little book showcasing a type of bus that can often be overlooked.

Churches of Warwickshire (5) : St Nicholas, Radford Semele

The parish church of St Nicholas in the village of Radford Semele dates from the 12th century, the tower being added in the 14th. The church was mostly rebuilt in 1889, but again in the 21st century after a deliberate fire in 2008 which destroyed everything in the church except the tower and the shell of the nave and chancel. The church was rebuilt and re-opened a few years later.

The church is in the Perpendicular style, the west tower having two stages. The nave has a north aisle and a south porch. There is a modern vestry to the north of the chancel.