Published by Phillimore & co, Chichester. 2008

Hardback, UK 1st edition in fine condition. Signed at the title page by the author. The dust wrapper, apart from the "signed copy" sticker at the front, is also fine and not clipped. There are no previous owner names or inscriptions. The Forest of Sherwood combines many of the most romantic elements of English history in one place. The ruthless Norman monarchs hunted here, but the Forest was still full of peasant life while great events were taking place at Clipstone's royal 'palace'. The Norman barons, fearing death and judgement, gifted land to the monasteries, and the monks became the first great owners of Sherwood besides the king. When the monasteries were swept away their place was quickly taken by acquisitive landowners who, through marriage and payment, became the new aristocracy. Some say they actually stole what was left of Sherwood from the Crown itself. For a brief time these gilded nobles ruled the Forest and the whole country, building political dynasties on local wealth and influence, with grand houses to match. The discovery of coal seemed to offer an even grander future of limitless wealth but it all vanished in barely two generations as stiffer taxation, combined with excessive gambling, womanising and wasteful living, threw away wealth that had taken generations to build up. Today Sherwood and the Dukeries has a different economy, increasingly based on tourism, as visitors come to see a Forest that is more legendary now than it ever was in centuries gone by.

Published by Faber & Faber, London. 1984

1st edition paperback. The book is in fine/as new condition. The Shell Guides were originally a 20th-century series of guidebooks on the counties of Britain. They were aimed at a new breed of car-driving metropolitan tourist, and for those who sought guides that were neither too serious nor too shallow and who took pleasure in the ordinary and peculiar culture of small town Britain. In the three decades after the Second World War the Shell Guides provided a surreptitiously subversive synthesis of the British countryside.

Published by Faber & Faber, London. 1984

1st edition hardback. The book and unclipped dust wrapper are in very good condition. The Shell Guides were originally a 20th-century series of guidebooks on the counties of Britain. They were aimed at a new breed of car-driving metropolitan tourist, and for those who sought guides that were neither too serious nor too shallow and who took pleasure in the ordinary and peculiar culture of small town Britain. In the three decades after the Second World War the Shell Guides provided a surreptitiously subversive synthesis of the British countryside.