Amberley Blog

It’s 1970, the United States have landed on the moon, the Vietnam war is raging, and The Beatles have just split up. Meanwhile, the world’s most famous steam locomotive Flying Scotsman is embarking on its second tour of America and two young men, Bill Wagner and Richard Hinchcliffe, are chasing it up the mid-west taking photographs and film of this...

I once had the dubious pleasure of working with a young man who, when asked for information, would respond with “I’ll dig a hole and look into it.” Fortunately Going Underground: The Potteries does not contain any such appalling jokes, but it does contain a lot of holes and I am sure you will find plenty of interesting items when...

The four modern counties of Yorkshire were once, like all of England and most of Britain, part of the Roman Empire from the mid-first to early fifth centuries AD. Yorkshire did not exist then, but the area that it covered includes some amazing remains from the ancient world. York itself was a provincial capital and visited by several Emperors, and...

While this book may be a collection of images of motive power in the 1980s, it is not necessarily a collection of images showing motive power of the 1980s. That was really all part of the appeal of observing and photographing diesel and electric traction in its environment during that decade. Nearly everything we looked at on the BR rail...

When I visited the Western Front for the first time many years ago, the vast cemeteries and gigantic memorials covered with the names of the missing made a big impression on me. It wasn’t just the scale. It was also the thought that these brave men had been robbed of their personal identities. They still seemed to be standing to...

When you write a book, you want someone to read it. Does this sound obvious? Well, in one sense yes of course. Yet it goes quite deep. Writing a book is finding common ground with other people. Also it is a bit like bringing up children. Parents raise their children to survive in the world. They love and protect their...

Coal mining has always been an integral part of the South Yorkshire Landscape, particularly in areas such as South Yorkshire. This area developed from a primarily farming and market community to a hive of industrial activity when coal mining began to expand during the 19th and 20th Centuries. Remnants of this past activity can still be seen today, although this...

There are two contenders for the title of the world’s first working class seaside resort. On opposite sides of the Atlantic are Lancashire’s Breezy Blackpool and New York’s Coney Island. Both places became hugely popular with working people in the late 19th century, and both were pioneers of amusement parks. Coney Island’s first claim to fame was the invention of...

Plantagenet Moments One of the greatest joys in delving into contemporary chronicles, household accounts or letters is not knowing what you might come across. Those tiny flashes that illuminate the person or the times in which they live, and I would like to share a few of those moments that I found while I was writing The Plantagenet Socialite. We...

This is my third book that I have published with Amberley and since my second book, the world has turned out to be a different kind of place. The freedom to move around and go and visit railway related locations was hampered by the lockdowns and restrictions we all faced in 2020, 2021, and early 2022. For me, this meant...