Jessie Vine's memoir begins in the last few days of peace in 1939. As the Anderson shelter is installed in the back garden of their Rochester home, Jessie, with her young daughter Joy, eagerly awaits her husband Tom's homecoming, as his ship returns to Chatham Dockyard. And then, when war seems inevitable, Jessie organises an evacuation from Rochester to Whitstable, where she rents a bungalow in the suburb of Tankerton. Tom soon goes back to sea, and the perils of war. They do not see him again for two years. In the meantime, Jessie helps out at a local school, while organising endless collections of salvage. When time allows, mother and daughter cycle all over East Kent to hunt down old film. With these prizes, Jessie compiles a unique photographic diary of life on the home front, which she sends to Tom at sea.
Taking you through the year day by day, The Canterbury Book of Days contains a quirky, eccentric, amusing or important event or fact from different periods of history, many of which had a major impact on the religious and political history of England as a whole. Ideal for dipping into, this addictive little book will keep you entertained and informed. Featuring hundreds of snippets of information gleaned from the vaults of Canterbury’s archives, it will delight residents and visitors alike.
Paul Crampton, one of Canterbury's leading historians, has compiled over 250 photographs to illustrate a wide and varied selection of Canterbury's lost buildings, comparing historic views with contemporary ones.
A timeless and enchanting children's fantasy classic by the author of The King of the Copper Mountains One morning, after a fierce storm, the people of the harbour come down to find a strange ship called the Neversink stuck fast on top of the sand dunes. Inside is only a small boy with a big cap - The Little Captain. He and his ship stay marooned on top of the dunes until one day a giant wave sweeps the Neversink to freedom. And so The Little Captain sets sail once more, this time with three of the town's children, Podgy, Marinka and Thomas, as his crew mates. Together they are determined to find the island of Evertaller, where legend has it children turn into grown-ups overnight and never have to go to school again... This enchanting seafaring adventure is beloved by generations of children in the Netherlands.
How many of us have seen a young vagrant on the street, and then wondered what awful set of circumstances, or unhappy twist of fate, had brought them to where they are now? Indeed, every homeless person has a tragic story to tell, and Toby's Burden is just one of them. A mugging victim arrives at a London hospital. He looks, but does not sound or behave, like an archetypal vagrant. Duty doctor Candida Cornish instantly recognises him: it is her long-lost brother Toby, not seen or heard from since vanishing from their home village in Kent many years before. In the days that follow, the siblings try to discover what had gone so terribly wrong for Toby in childhood. However, nobody will be able to help him, until he can first help himself, and start banishing all those ghosts he'd been carrying around for nearly 20 years.
Canterbury is so much more than the relatively small area enclosed by what remains of its ancient city walls. During Roman times, when the city wall first appeared, the areas occupied by today's suburbs were used as burial grounds. From the Saxon period onwards, houses, inns and small businesses appeared along the main approach roads to the city, such as those from London, Dover and Whitstable. This was when Canterbury suburbs were truly born. In the early medieval years, churches such as St Dunstan's, St Stephen's, and St Paul's had been established outside the city walls. The suburbs continued to establish themselves around these places of worship, and gradually acquired their own identities. Even today, suburbs such as St Dunstan's, Northgate and Wincheap retain many useful shops, and it is possible for local residents to buy what they need without having to go into the city centre.
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