John Challis

'An eccentric life, wonderfully told. Lady Anne Barnard was a brave traveller, artist and observer. Stephen Taylor brings her brilliantly out of the shadows.' Stella TillyardLady Anne Barnard lived at the heart of Georgian society, yet was never fully part of it. The Prince of Wales counted among many friends and she was brilliant in company. But s...

‘There’s water in the engine,’ he said. ‘The engine has stopped.’ This changed everything… Surviving the Storms brings together incredible first-hand accounts of rescues carried out by the remarkable RNLI lifesavers.In this collection of heart-wrenching and life-affirming missions, we hear blow-by-blow descriptions of some of the most dramatic resc...

An account of Boy Wellum, one of the youngest fighter pilots in the Battle of Britain. Enlisting in the RAF weeks before the outbreak of World War II, Geoffrey Wellum found himself fighting the Germans over the English Channel, a Spitfire pilot at just 18 years of age....

Castles in the Air is a beautifully written, autobiographical story of rescuing an ancient mansion. Gwydir Castle was inhabited by ravers and rats until Judy Corbett and her husband Peter Welford found and acquired this 500-year-old house mouldering in the foothills of Snowdonia. Despite the toads, strange smells and squatters, they decided to mort...