A book launch is always fun but it is particularly special when the book is exceptional. A Celebration of Petersfield is a real labour of love and like a lot of successes has many fathers, but particular mention should go to the design work of Neil Pafford. The book is not a history but a picture of a thriving living town – a cracking piece of publishing.
Just out in paperback is The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan. It is part love story, part meditation on heroism and part picture of the horrors of the death railway. It was a popular choice as winner of the Booker and is well worth a read.
For those interested in military memoirs , An Englishman at War, the World War ll diary of Stanley Christopherson is a particular delight. He was a stockbroker who joined up in 1939 and ended the war as the colonel of a crack regiment of Tanks – a better description of what it must have been like would be hard to find.