Category Archives: books

Publishing an ebook (Part 2)

Posted on August 27, 2014 by Nigel Smith

Having got Flag Fen: a concise Archæoguide successfully published for Kindle (see Part 1) I wanted to get it published to other platforms as an epub file (and other formats). Not least, I wouldn’t be comfortable with Amazon having a monopoly … Continue reading →

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Paul Hamilton, Kevin Eldon’s Prefect Cousin

Posted on August 14, 2014 by Nigel Smith

I must admit to taking up Kevin Eldon’s My Prefect Cousin: a short biography of Paul Hamilton with some trepidation. Comedians often don’t make good authors – what’s funny in a stand-up routine, when written down, only takes up a … Continue reading →

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Flag Fen: a Concise Archæoguide

Posted on May 29, 2014 by Nigel Smith

Originally posted on Francis Pryor – In the Long Run:
And now for a big digression: I’m moving aside for a guest blogger, my niece Alice Smith, herself an active blogger on the theatre. She has just graduated from Leeds in…

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The Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books and Inept Guardian Competiton Question

Posted on November 24, 2012 by Nigel Smith

The Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books winner will be announced on the 26th November. The shortlist is: The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos by Brian Greene; Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering … Continue reading →

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How times have changed

Posted on May 14, 2012 by Nigel Smith

Here’s the cover of a book for trades union bargainers, published in 1975.

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The Lazy Tour of Two Lazy Apprentices: a minor work by Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens

Posted on February 11, 2012 by Nigel Smith

I sometimes have a problem with endnotes in books, as I have mentioned elsewhere. If I’m reading a book and there are footnotes, I am drawn to look at them, even though they interrupt the flow of the story and … Continue reading →

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How Would You Define Hephaestus Books’ Interesting ‘Paradigm’?

Posted on January 23, 2012 by Nigel Smith

I haven’t had an intemperate rant for quite a long time now, but I feel a series coming on, of which the first is: Whilst browsing through Amazon looking for books on a variety of subjects recently I have been … Continue reading →

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Francis Pryor’s The Birth of Modern Britain: A Journey into Britain’s Archaeological Past: 1550 to the Present

Posted on October 12, 2011 by Nigel Smith

Back in 2003 Britain BC, the first volume of Francis Pryor‘s ‘archaeological history’ of Britain appeared, with Britain AD close on its heels; then a couple of years later Britain in the Middle Ages was published. I’ve eventually just got … Continue reading →

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The Cambridge Murders and The Crossing Places : two stories set in East Anglia

Posted on September 16, 2011 by Nigel Smith

I was in conversation with my brother-in-law the other day and, among many other things, we talked of Glyn Daniel. I knew of him as an archaeologist and author of books of popular archaeology (e.g. The First Civilisations and Megalith … Continue reading →

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Brian Aldiss, John Clute, Michael Moorcock and Norman Spinrad at the British Library

Posted on June 22, 2011 by Nigel Smith

The OED says: New Wave, n. and adj. Forms: also with lower-case initials. Etymology: < NEW adj. + WAVE n.  2 b. With the. A loose movement in science fiction writing from the mid-1960s to mid-1970s, characterized by an experimental … Continue reading →

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