Amberley Blog

Sawmill Sketches French artist Henry Matisse once said that ‘drawing is putting a line round an idea’. Technically though, a drawing is usually far more detailed than a sketch and might well become the artist’s finished work – while a sketch is usually considered to be a quick record of movement or a reminder for the artist to further develop...

I am not an expert in anything, I wrote this book to help people like me who also are not experts but would like to find out about some parts of Plymouth which have always intrigued them. Hopefully I might have answered some of their questions. Drake’s Island. (Plymouth's Military Heritage, Amberley Publishing) Introduction: Plymouth is a naval city –...

Nowadays, the European coach market is dominated by a few manufacturers whose products are sold throughout the continent and beyond – think Mercedes-Benz, Iveco, Scania, Volvo etc. As well as European owned manufacturers, there is considerable input from China and Japan. It wasn’t always like this. From the end of the Second World War until the late 1960s, virtually all...

Introduction Here we follow on from our book Cheshire Murders and Misdemeanours. This book continues with a look at a selection of strange, sad and tragic tales through the years, all in the county sitting between the cities of Manchester, Liverpool and Chester. A mainly agricultural county, it is also famous for railway engineering, salt mining and the extensive chemical...

Preface There is still the thrill as they go through; the spotters and photographers eagerly recording the occasion. The scream of steam for long held generations in awe, as locomotives thundered through cuttings and tunnels and over embankments, putting the march of travel onto a new level of scale and speed. The excitement of rail, the energy of builders, the...

The Steam lorry (or wagon as it is more commonly known) dates back to the origins of steam motive power. In Britain, the first successful attempt at a steam road vehicle was William Murdock’s three-wheel steam carriage of 1786. But the main breakthrough was by the celebrated Cornish engineer Richard Trevithick, who pioneered the application of high-pressure steam. After building...

Lightships, their Design, Development and Diversity follows on from my initial definitive work Guiding Lights, the Design and Development of the British Lightship from 1732 published by Tempus, Stroud in 2001. It updates and extends the former work with many more diagrams and illustrations and is the result of some 35 years of research on the subject. In the intervening...

Royal Heirs Who Didn't Take the Throne Introduction The Setting Sun The premature death of Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales, the eldest son and heir apparent of King James I of England and VI of Scotland, provoked a massive outpouring of grief. The much-lamented young prince, said to have been ‘the glory of his country, and the admiration of all...

The formation of the ideas for this book go back to 2010 when I was undertaking my Masters with king's college London whilst attending the Advanced Command and Staff Course.  I had the choice of an elective module, and I choose the 'commonwealth forces in Africa during the Second World War' as I had always had an interest in both...

Covering an often-ignored subject, Northern Electrics is a colour photographic survey of the various types of Electric Multiple Units that have been seen or have worked in the North of England from the 1970’s until the present day. With a geographical area from Cheshire , North Staffordshire, Merseyside, Greater Manchester, Lancashire, Cumbria, the North East and North, West & South...