Somerset Books

(Maureen Wincott)  The author is a keen local historian, and has explored many topics in and around Somerset. During one of these pieces of research she connected with a previously unknown distant relative in Australia, who shared a letter written…..

(Gordon Rendell).  The author, aged three at the start of the war in 1939, experienced the following six years with a sharp intensity.  Having an enquiring mind and time of his hands, he studied the village characters and was often…..

(Anne Murch)  The author brings to life what it was really like to be a member of the rural poor during the Georgian period.  Her findings are based on ten years of detailed research from many sources, primarily the accounts…..

(Alastair Macleay)  Situated at the eastern end of the Mendip hills, the Somerset market town of Frome has a wealth of history, much of which lies waiting to be discovered among the architectural gems that line its scenic streets.  Frome…..

(Richard Sims)  Coker Canvas provides the first detailed account of the textile trade in the area around East and West Coker.  Textiles have formed the core of area’s economy from the 17th century and, although not as important as it once…..

(ed Joyce Jefferson)  The village of Trudoxhill was once part of the parish of Nunney, until it became a parish in its own right in 1950, hence the inclusion of both places in thus book. This history of the two…..

(Terry Townsend) This book is a literary pub crawl around two of England’s most beautiful and least spoilt shires, Dorset and Somerset, following in the steps of famous and lesser known writers.  The author has included town pubs, country pubs,…..

(Roy Maber) This story of a Somerset village was developed by the author by working hard to trawl his memory back through his childhood and later, and then researching the background to those memories to provide a more complete story……

(Simon Haines) Almost 190 photographs trace some of the many ways in which Minehead and Dunster have changed over the last century. The pictures are arranged in a ‘then and now’ fashion, so that direct comparisons may be made between…..

(Robin Ansell, Allan Collier & Phil Nichols)  This book is a celebration of Somerset’s photographic history, as seen through the lives and work of nearly 800 photographers. Each photographer is listed with details of where he/she was working and when,…..

(Ann Heeley, Louise Clapp & Liz Snelgrove)  Life is shown as it really was in the twentieth century in the words of those who have lived through great changes, drawn from a collection of over six hundred oral recordings of…..

(Phil Nichols)  A detailed look at the lives of 86 servicemen who were born in, or who lived in, the village before or during the Great War. In addition to the standard research sources for the period, the author has…..

(Clarence Bradley).  The author, who moved to Montacute from Stoke-sub-Hamdon three years after his birth, joined the Air Training Corps in his teens.  This nurtured in him an interest in military aviation and local people’s involvement in the Second World…..

(Jack W Sweet)  A collection of fifty tales of murder, mayhem and mishap, ranging from Mary Adlam killing her drunken husband in Regency Bath, a test flight crash at Yeovil and mine disasters in the Somerset coalfields, to the missing…..

(Jack Sweet)  The author describes the many times and the variety of ways in which the people of Somerset enjoyed themselves – sometimes very oddly indeed – in those ’good old days’ when the world and our lives were simpler……

(Mick Davis & David Lassmam)  The authors have delved into the local records of Frome, historically one of the largest towns in Somerset, to reveal the dark side of life for ordinary people through the ages. The stories include a…..