Amberley Blog

Many cities of the world are famous for their squares. For example: Red Square in Moscow, Times Square in New York, Saint Peter’s Square in Vatican City and Tiananmen Square in China. When it comes to London many people, if asked, would name Trafalgar Square or even Leicester Square. The squares (and one might add the parks and gardens) are...

On 4 February 1870 the Durham County Advertiser included the following short obituary: At the vicarage, St Helen’s Auckland, at the house of her brother-in- law, 21st ult,. Mrs Janet Taylor, fourth daughter of the late Rev Peter lonn, vicar of Sately in this county. She was the authoresss of several books on Navigation and Astronomy and a few years...

Nowadays I usually come out to most people as a ‘toy car collector’. Time was that I might have hidden the fact away from new acquaintances, at least until I was sure they could handle it – and until I was fairly sure they thought I was, in all other respects, normal! Belonging to a collectors club helps in many...

In the Christian calendar between 100 and 200 AD, the occupation forces of Roman Britain established a military revictualling military and trading station, Derventio, at a ford across the Derwent. Two centuries after the demise of Rome’s hold over the Britons, Saxon invaders levelled Derventio, forcefully asserting their authority over the settlement’s erstwhile owners. The defensive site, named Northworthige by...

I retired from the British Transport Police in 2011 and whilst I had no intention of severing my links with the police service little did I realize at that point how close and fulfilling those relationships would continue to be. In 2013, somewhat by accident, I started writing and since then have been fortunate enough to have worked closely with...

My first recollection of being on a paddle steamer is backing out from the Pleasure Pier at Weymouth in 1956 aged five aboard what I came to know well later as our local paddle steamer Consul. It was a sunny afternoon. We were sitting as a family on the buoyant apparatus at the aft end of the promenade deck. There...

Researching my book, Operation Big – The Race to Stop Hitler’s A-Bomb, forced me to revise my view of the biggest event of the 20th Century – the dropping of the nuclear bomb of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945. I had been brought up to believe that the atomic bomb was dropped on Japan to force Emperor Hirohito into surrender...

This year, 2016, is the 60th year of the Andrea Doria sinking.   That number prompted this book, Andrea Doria & Other Recent Liner Disasters, another look back. In addition, I have selected some other passenger ship disasters, but not all. Many liners finish their days at the scrap yard, reduced to rubble, but some have had tragic, very sad endings. This...

Eliza Adkins couldn’t go on listening to the distressed cries of her child for another minute. Put yourself in her shoes. Homeless, friendless, without recourse to money and unemployable so long as little Zadock needed her. Forty-two years on the planet – possibly more – had finally brought her to the Loughborough Union Workhouse, and now she was separated from...

I can probably trace my interest in and fascination with quarrying and quarries back to ingrained memories from early childhood when I would spend what seemed like hours gazing out of the window on gloomy winter days across the fields behind our little cottage. Entranced by the red glow from the open doors of a Hoffmann brick kiln, and when...