After a career in teaching, first in schools and then in higher education, during which time he founded and was the first Editor of the Journal of Assistive Technologies, Dr Chris Abbott is now Emeritus Reader at King’s College London, and is focussing on theatre research during his retirement.

In addition to his academic Education titles, he is the author of An East Anglian Odyssey, the story of the DaSilva puppet company (Wisbech & Fenland Museum, 2006) and Putting on Panto to pay for the Pinter: Henry Marshall pantomimes at Salisbury Playhouse 1955 to 1985 (Hobnob Press, 2012). He is currently writing the first book on theatre in Salisbury from 1600 to 1940, focusing in particular on the eighteenth century when the city was an important theatrical site. Chris Abbott is a regular writer and reviewer for Sardines theatre magazine.

Having a keen interest in history and in literature written in English, in equal measures, it is not surprising that I focus my research almost entirely on subjects that are related to the history of English literature. I like to think that I have been influenced by my early years growing up in Stoke Newington, London, the location of my birth. It is in the district of Hackney, a place with a long and rich history which has featured in some of the great novels since the time of Daniel Defoe. Today, it is still known as a part of London which has attracted dissenters and others leading to a lively exchange of ideas.

My career has been in teaching and lecturing and during the 1980s I had the opportunity to live and work in Zambia. Whilst there I began to collect information for a doctorate that I later received from the University of Manchester. The focus was on aspects of the history of South-Central and East Africa and a number of my publications are based on the narrative of that work. I then turned to the study of post-colonial literature written by Africans, Victorian women in literary networks, and women writers of the Early Modern era. I am constantly reminded of the amazing literary heritage available to us all, and of the diverse people from multiple backgrounds, and from all parts of the globe, who continue to contribute to the ever-growing lists of collections.

Stephen Allen is a doctor and clinical scientist who has enjoyed a long and demanding career as a consultant physician at the Royal Bournemouth Hospital. He was born in Bristol in 1952 and educated at Kingswood Grammar School and Manchester University where he read Biochemistry and Medicine as an undergraduate, then later received a research doctorate for work in the field of the neurological control of breathing. Having now retired from medical practice, he continues to be involved, as a visiting professor, with research and training through the Universities of Southampton and Bournemouth and the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and as a Fellow of the Royal Colleges of Physicians of London and Edinburgh. In the medical domain, his publications total more than 200 items, mostly research papers, chapters and textbooks.

English literature has been one of his abiding passions, and he has read and written poetry since early adult life. Important influences include Ted Hughes, John Clare, Seamus Heaney and Geoffrey Chaucer. His poems reflect his deep and empathic interest in the natural world, wildlife conservation, fly fishing and our distant past. Though spanning a range of poetic styles, he tends to favour the use of rhyme, alliteration and structure. Stephen and his wife now live in Salisbury. Previously, they lived and worked at various times in Manchester, Stockport, Zambia and Dorset.

I very much enjoyed collaborating with Julia Allen on our recently published book about Mary Sidney Herbert. My focus was on aspects of literature including Mary Sidney’s psalm translations: fresh, individual and often contemporary in their feel. Philip Sidney’s beautiful and moving sonnets were also explored, as well as his intriguing and wry debate about the value of poetry. I revisited my love for George Herbert’s verse and found a new appreciation of his clever Latin poems too. Overall I learnt a lot and rediscovered much. As with all writing and research the exploration is humbling and the writing a challenge.

I taught in further and higher education for many years. Enabling students to both enjoy and to analyse literary works is a privilege and very rewarding. Other books which I have written include several textbooks for ‘A’ level English Language and Literature and two study guides for the Caribbean Examinations Council. Writing these literature guides was a particularly exciting project involving trips to Barbados to meet writers and examiners. I was very lucky to be able to travel and to discover Caribbean poets that were new to me, such as Kendel Hippolyte and Olive Senior. My passion for all types of poetry continues.

Bio coming soon

Philip Browne was born and educated in Ireland but has lived in Dorset for almost half a century. After a career in education, he retired in 2010. Since then, he has researched and written the historical biography, The Unfortunate Captain Peirce and the Wreck of the Halsewell East Indiaman, 1786, published in 2016 by Hobnob Press. In 2018 it was awarded the Dorset Literary Festival’s Writing Prize.

During the first Covid lockdown, Philip began researching the lives of those who lived in 19th century Fordington, the neighbourhood of Dorchester where he continues to live. He is married to the poet, Beth Brooke, and they have two sons.

Brought up in Devon, John read classics at Bristol University, where he gained his doctorate, and then trained as a librarian. After working for Wiltshire libraries as local studies librarian he went freelance in 1988 and has since pursued a varied career associated with local history and archaeology, including lecturing, editing and writing. His first major book, Endless Street, a social history of Salisbury, was published in 1983, and inaugurated Hobnob Press, which he took over in 2001 and has been expanding ever since. In 2011 he began a series of contracts editing volumes of the Victoria County History in Gloucestershire and Wiltshire. He has lived all over Wiltshire, but since 2014 his home has been a flat in a warehouse in Gloucester Docks, which is also the base for Hobnob Press. He is a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of the West of England and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries.

Alison Clink has had over fifty short stories published in mainstream magazines, both in the UK and abroad. Two of her stories have been broadcast on Radio 4.

Born in Mitcham, south east London, she was brought up in West Wickham in Kent, attended Bullers Wood School in Chislehurst and read English and European Literature at the University of Essex.

She moved to the West Country in the eighties and lives in a small village outside Frome in Somerset. She has an MA in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University and now concentrates on novel and script writing. For more information please visit her website http://www.alisonclink.co.uk

A fine art degree and then 30 years of protecting and maintaining the public footpaths and bridleways in South Wiltshire was likely to bear some creative fruit, especially with iconic Stonehenge in the centre of my patch. I retired 3 years ago but still live in Wilton in South Wiltshire with my partner Lindsay and when I am not writing, drawing or taking our grandchildren off to fabulous Salisbury Museum (at their suggestion), I play in an instrumental acoustic band called the Kings of Lounge. I can be contacted via my Instagram account nickcowenart

Mick was brought up in Plymouth tracing his ancestry back to Dartmoor in the 17th century. He was secretary of his local archaeological group at 16 before moving to Notting Hill in the early 1970s and becoming involved in the Underground Press and Compendium Bookshop in Camden Town. Eventually, gainful employment became unavoidable and he was taken on as a solicitors clerk by a leading firm of criminal defence solicitors. The next 20 years were spent in and out of Crown Courts and prisons dealing with everything from shoplifters to serial killers-little pay but a fascinating job - until they got law students to do it for nothing. He claims not to be bitter. Research into family history and renovating an ancient cottage in Frome in 1992 released a passion for writing. His first book, The Historic Inns of Frome (2015) was followed swiftly by three more on local history in collaboration with David Lassman. Mick's first book for Hobnob Press was 'A Surfeit of Magnificence' The Trials and Tribulations of Thomas Champneys of Orchardleigh. He and wife Lorraine have lived in Frome since the early 90s. He now writes and researches a full-time, is a volunteer at Frome Museum, a committee member of the Frome Society for Local Study and editor of its Frome Yearbook. Mick is currently writing his 11th book on the Thames Convict Prison Hulks.

Michaela Foster has a degree in English Literature from London University and a PGCE from Exeter University. She worked in education for over thirty years before retirement. Since then, she has produced illustrative material for several books on history and archaeology before co-authoring Wilton Women (Hobnob, 2022).

Dr Ruscombe Foster holds BA and PhD degrees in History from the University of Southampton. Recipient of a major state studentship from the British Academy, he became the first graduate to work on the Wellington Papers when they were deposited at Southampton in 1983. After 28 years’ teaching, he resigned in order to research and write full time. He has authored four books and nearly 200 articles on subjects ranging from Alfred the Great to Margaret Thatcher. Two of his books, Sidney Herbert (2019) and Wilton Women (2022), have been published by Hobnob. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 2005.

Poet, Musician & Artist.

I have been writing poetry since the mid-sixties, becoming smitten, just after my schooldays, with Dylan Thomas, and soon after, with Gerald Manley Hopkins. The expressive wordplay of these 2 great poets was what appealed to me most, not to mention their wonderful use of rhythm and aliteration. It was "music" to my 18 year old mind, entering my life as I was absorbing the music of the great post-bop jazz musicians on the rise in the USA.

Getting my poems published or even read, became a frustrating process, off-set only by my aspirations to become a graphic artist, or a vocalist on the burgeoning R&B scene in the West End of London. But my poetry-writing continued, although it wasn't until the age of 69 that I was first published, when I was asked to write an introduction to a catalogue of water-colours by the late David Evans, a friend and mentor when i was still struggling to find a means of artistic expression in the mid 60s and early 70s. I have lived in Frome since the 1990s..

Originally from suburban Woodford on the border between Essex and North London, Liz Hutchinson escaped to the countryside as soon as she could to study Economic and Social History at the University of Kent at Canterbury, then to Suffolk to begin her career and start a family. Working in Human Resources and Accounts first in local government and then engineering, she finally became HR Manager at Downing College in the University of Cambridge where she learned a great deal about catering hierarchies, grounds maintenance, the professional way to clean a Fellow’s rooms, and the deadly rivalry between rowing Colleges. When her son Thomas started his family in Somerset, she seized the opportunity to retire and moved to Frome in 2011, to help with childcare and fulfil a long-held desire to write the type of book she had always enjoyed reading, rather than factual reports and minutes.

Brought up in her grandmother’s Lincolnshire cottage during World War Two, Judith Nicholls has lived in Wiltshire since 1970. Her first collection of poetry, Magic Mirror, was published by Faber in 1985, and she has written or compiled more than fifty collections of poetry for children, and her poems have appeared in hundreds of anthologies. Judith sees poetry as pattern, understanding, exploration, exhortation and explanation. Her interest has always remained in crafting words, in finding echoes in the poems. In many hundreds of visits to schools, she would always unfold the sequence of the drafts that usually preceded the smallest poem. Although her poems are still to be found in many anthologies, Judith’s books are now largely out of print, so it has been lovely, she says, to have been able to make a selection from them for Hobnob Press.

Cheryl Nicol is a prizewinning author based in rural New Zealand. She has published three historical biographies, and a memoir of growing up in the 1960s.

Her first book, Inheriting the Earth: The Long family’s 500 year reign in Wiltshire is described in a review by The Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine as “informative, impressive and praiseworthy” … and “a most important addition to published sources for Wiltshire.”

John Payne is a writer, local historian and poet. Most of his many books and articles are about either Catalonia and the English West Country.

Born in Bath, John now lives at Frome in Somerset. Somewhere in between he had a career in adult education and as an academic researcher.

He sees non-fiction writing as a highly creative activity – ‘a matter’, he says, ‘of where you choose to stand and what you choose to look at.’

His favourite book – The West Country: a cultural history (Signal Books, 2009) – was described in The Independent as ‘charming, learned and a little old-fashioned’. John is very comfortable with that description.

His well-illustrated A West Country Homecoming (Hobnob, 2020) is a blend of personal, family and social history, all written backwards, i.e. from present to past. ‘A challenge for the reader as well as the writer’, John agreed with a twinkle in his eye.

His other ‘lockdown book’ is Workhouse to Hospital: a brief account of the Odd Down site of Bath Union Workhouse (Odd Down Press, 2021). Proceeds of sales support the campaign for a permanent memorial to the thousands of men, women and children who died in the Bath Workhouse and are buried in unmarked graves in a field on the outskirts of Bath. Most of the sales are through the Oldfield Park Bookshop in Bath. ‘It’s simple’, says John. ‘Local authors need local bookshops.’

Dr Andrew Pickering is the Programme Manager for a University of Plymouth BA (Hons) degree in History, Heritage and Archaeology delivered at Strode College in Street, Somerset. His own undergraduate and postgraduate studies were undertaken at the universities of Birmingham, Keele, Bath and Leicester. He moved from Frome to Bruton in March 1996. He is the author of several local histories including Steinbeck and the Matter of Arthur: Bruton, Somerset, 1959 (History, Heritage and Archaeology Press), and The Witches of Selwood: Witchcraft Belief and Accusation in Seventeenth-Century Somerset (The Hobnob Press). Andrew is chair of the committee at Bruton Museum and his wife, Lisa, is the owner-manager of Ape Or Eden, a small independent bookshop on Bruton’s historic High Street.

Stuart A Raymond is a West Country man with a degree in history and politics from Keele University, an MA from the University of Adelaide, and, like the founder of Hobnob, trained as a librarian at the College of Librarianship Wales. He served as librarian of what was then the Yorkshire Archaeological Society, 1975-9, and then in various Australian academic libraries, before returning to the UK in 1990 to launch his authorial career. He has written numerous handbooks and manuals for family and local historians; the latest is Researching Local History: Your Guide to the Sources (Pen & Sword, 2022). He is now applying the methods advocated in these books to the history of Wiltshire, challenging the notion that famous places are primarily interesting for the houses or gardens that the gentry built, or the remains left by prehistoric man. His Stourton before Stourhead, published by Hobnob in 2019, tells the story of the ordinary people of Stourton before the gardens were designed. Avebury without the Stones (to be published by Hobnob in 2023 or perhaps 2024) will tell the story of the ordinary people of Avebury, c.1550-1800, barely mentioning the megaliths.

Stuart has also written numerous journal articles relating to the history of Devon, Cornwall, Somerset, and Glamorgan. His MA thesis was based on the probate records of Week St Mary (Cornwall). In addition to his own research, Stuart is reviews editor for the Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine, serves on the committee of the Wiltshire Record Society (for whom he is preparing an Avebury volume), and is a member of Hilperton Parish Church Council.

Pamela Slocombe became involved in archaeology as a teenager. She studied and taught modern languages before working in various roles in the Pre-school Playgroups Association, including a term as County Organiser. She started the Wiltshire Buildings Record in 1979, which she ran until 1995. Since then she has been its Publications Editor. She is a long-standing member of the Medieval Villages Research Group and was elected FSA in 2008.

After military service and studies at Oxford and the Sorbonne, I worked in Ibiza and back in Oxford before moving to New York as a translator at United Nations headquarters, followed by five years with the UN in Bangkok as translator, editor and interpreter. I then joined WHO in Geneva, where I spent many years in editing and publishing. I later worked as a free-lance editor and writer in France. I now live in Frome (Somerset), with strong interests in music, sketching and pottery, poetry and natural history.

Helen Wallimann, the daughter of a Swiss hotelier, was born in Wales, survived the War in London and then lived in Cheltenham UK (at the Savoy). After her MA from Edinburgh University she worked in publishing in Munich, Paris and London. From 1973 until 2001 she was employed as a teacher of French and English at the Kantonsschule Solothurn, Switzerland.

Helen Wallimann taught English at Chinese universities for two years (1989-90 and 2002-03). Later, she taught English didactics to Chinese schoolteachers in Gansu Province. She attended various courses and seminars on Chinese language and literature at Zurich University. Besides translating three novels by her husband, Erhard von Büren, and a collection of Swiss folk tales from German, she has translated from Chinese articles on contemporary Chinese art, and poems by various modern Chinese poets. An illustrated account of her 2003 stay among the cave-dwellers in northern China (A Visit to Gansu Province for the Chinese New Year) was published as an ebook in 2020. Living in Hotels was published by Hobnob Press in 2022.

Barry Williamson lived as a boy on the edge of the Wardour estate in Wiltshire. He grew up with stories about the Arundells from old people who lived in Ansty and Wardour and Tisbury; stories that ranged from the Civil War sieges of the old castle to the building of the new mansion, to the death of the last Lord Arundell on his way home from imprisonment in Colditz in 1944.

He spent his working life teaching History in secondary schools in India and Bristol. He was a passionate advocate of the “new History” approach which encouraged children to investigate the past rather than simply learning the facts. When he retired he took the opportunity to research the Arundell family from their papers deposited in the Wiltshire Record office. The Arundell family gave great support and encouragement.

With my first news picture published when I was thirteen, I went on to provide news photographs and later video footage to local, national and international news outlets. I grew up in Dursley, Gloucestershire. I then moved to Bristol and Liverpool for a short time. I finally ended up in Swindon in 1974, where I covered many of Swindon’s news stories.

Setting up Calyx Picture Agency in 1981, I accumulated an archive of over two million negatives and many more digital picture files over the next 40 years. For over 12 years, the agency supplied news video footage to television outlets; including many hours of coverage of the Royal Family, both on duty and off duty.

On retirement, I decided that the archive should be digitised and catalogued; but, on doing this, I found interesting images whose stories needed research before putting them into some form of published material, hence my books from the archive.