More than 20 facsimile articles from the archives of Reader’s Digest magazine mix first-person stories with individual profiles of wartime leaders, a feature on Winston Churchill’s War Rooms, Cornelius Ryan’s Untold Stories of D-Day and more. My Ride on a Torpedo, by the captain of the destroyer St Laurent in 1940, describes how his quick thinking saved an entire ship when a 600-pound warhead of TNT broke loose on deck. Night Train to Chittagong tells of a dangerous railway journey from Bengal. And Harry Secombe recalls his call-up and departure for active service from Waterloo station, in 1942. The articles offer a fascinating and nostalgic glimpse of the personal side of war, all recounted in inimitable Reader’s Digest style.

In her Introduction, Reader’s Digest magazine Editor-In-Chief Gill Hudson explains that many of the articles have come from the readers themselves. “Many of the articles come from winners of the Reader’s Digest ‘First Person’ Award. The award was given for ‘true and hitherto unpublished’ stories that were ‘adventurous, humorous, dramatic or inspirational’ and World War II provided a rich stream.”

In the book’s foreword, Air Chief Marshal The Lord Stirrup explains that “If we are to understand history it is no good just looking at key dates and major events.” The Chief of the Defence Staff from 2006 to 2010, who began his career as an RAF fighter pilot and saw action in the Dhofur War, goes on to say that, “We must understand the people who took part in them: how they felt, how they thought, and how they behaved. Only then does the past come alive in a way that enables us to understand it and relate to it. Only then does history tell us something meaningful about who we are and where we come from.”

Reader’s Digest War Stories: Daring first-hand accounts of World War II from the magazine archives (RRP £9.99; ISBN 978-1-78020-101-6), is available in June 2012.  Reader’s Digest War Stories, is one of two History as it happened titles from Reader’s Digest for 2012. May 2012 sees the release of companion title, Reader’s Digest & the Royals.

- Viva Brighton, Fringe, May 2012

A fixture in the California street arts scene, Martinez achieved international acclaim with his bestselling book GRAFF: The Art and Technique of Graffiti.  For the 2012 Brighton Fringe, Martinez will create an all new original piece that mixes contemporary and traditional styles to push the boundaries of urban art.

 
Speaking of his first trip to the UK, Martinez said: ‘I am really looking forward to visiting the UK. Graffiti is part of a global culture of conversation and exchange, shaping the places that we live. Events like the Brighton Fringe bring so much creative energy together in one place and for me it’s all about creating.’

 
Edward “Scape” Martinez started to craft his skills as a graffiti artist throughout the late 1980′s. He studied the styles of New York Writers like Futura 2000 and Dondi White. While in the South Bay Area he became known for his unique use of colours and expressive lettering styles, pushing the idea of abstract graffiti art.

 
While doing street art Scape still had a passion for pushing himself and his artwork, so he set out and began to study 1970’s New York Abstract Expressionism. Learning about great artists like Mark Rothko, Willem DeKooning, and Franz Kline. So in the mid 1990’s he began to make the leap from street art to fine art. He started using spray paint, acrylics, and markers to create large abstract paintings on canvas. As an emerging artist, his fine art paintings combined elements of graffiti and abstract expressionism to create rhythmic and expressive compositions that went beyond the standard graffiti techniques being used by others.

 
Today Scape Martinez is a best-selling author having written two books on creating graffiti-style art, “Graff: The Art and Technique of Graffiti” and “Graff 2: Next Level Graffiti Techniques” and May 2012 sees the release of his latest title, the Graff Colour Workbook (ISBN 9781440318634; SRP £9.99) from Impact Books.

With the first five titles live on the web, the series will produce more than 60 titles in 2012.  The team behind The Ghost Chronicles and Ghosts Caught on Film print book series have launched The Paranormal ebook series to bring rare, classic and out-of-print books on psychic mediumship, ghosts, witchcraft and more, to the digital age.

The first five titles from The Paranormal span a range of topics from psychical research to discussion on life after death by some of the most influential authors in Victorian spiritualism and in modern psychical research.

Catherine Crowe’s The Night Side of Nature was a bestseller when it was originally published in 1851 and it delves into the means of investigating supernatural happenings. Exploring strange encounters, precognitive dreaming, near-death experiences, apparitions, and wraiths, the book examines cases of supernatural happenings of the day. For sceptics, there is rational examination and compelling evidence that will tempt them to open their mind. For believers there is evidence of the hidden power of spiritual seeing and intuitive knowing; the ring of authenticity attached itself to this exhaustive investigation of the paranormal and the unexplained.

Psychical Research and Survival, James Hyslop, considers evidence for psychical phenomena, proceeding on scientific lines. The chief of the many problems that confront it is concerned with phenomena purporting to establish the fact of the survival of human personality after bodily death. This title describes the genesis and the work of psychical research with special reference to this central problem, and deals with its scientific, philosophic, religious and moral implications.

Life After Death, edited by Sir James Marchant, is a collection of essays from Victorian Spiritualists and contemporary Christian religious leaders discussing different theories on what happens after death. Originally published in 1925 the book features an essay from Sir Oliver Joseph Lodge, President of the Society for Psychical Research from 1901 to 1903.

The Paranormal series has also released a digital edition of William Henry Salter’s classic work on paranormal investigation, Ghosts and Apparitions, originally published in 1938. The former president of the Society for Psychical Research participated in a number of experiments and became an authority on the subject of automatic writing. He was also interested in telepathy, apparitions, mediumship, and the evidence for survival.

Edited by American psychologist Carl Murchison, The Case for and Against Psychical Belief  is a collection of fourteen essays from top spiritualists of the 1920s including Sir Oliver Lodge, Harry Houdini, Mary Austin and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

The Paranormal series consultant, Dr Melvyn Willin, author of Ghosts Caught on Film, is looking forward to presenting a range of ebooks throughout the year covering everything from angels and UFOs to near-death experiences, vampires, ghosts and witchcraft.  Speaking of the project, Dr Willin said ‘We’re very excited and already have a number of interesting vintage titles ready to bring back for the Paranormality series.  We hope to publish more than 50 ebooks this year with the aim of captivating even the most hardened skeptics.’

For more inoformation about the series, visit www.fwmedia.co.uk/theparanormal

As the fair draws to a close today, everyone from management, sales and editorial, believes that 2012 will shape up to be a great year for US, UK and international business.

Sara Domville, President, F&W Media, Inc.

James Woollam, Managing Director, F&W Media International

Ali Myer, Craft Community Leader, F&W Media International

Steven Sussman, Director of Sales, Dover Publications

Stephanie McKenna, Rights Manager at F&W Media imprint Adams MediaAnnabel Youldon,  Head of Sales Operations, and Rachel MacPhail, Special Sales & Custom Content,

of F&W Media International

Editorial Teams with author Colin Duriez (far right), author of autumn 2012 release,

Amazing & Extraordinary Facts: JRR Tolkien

 We are looking for a results-driven business leader to serve as Craft Business Manager for the thriving Craft Community. Working with the Global Craft Community Leader the position is responsible for developing strategy for the UK business and following through on individual initiatives and ideas building and executing implementation plans for product in a broad array of media including distribution through the web, books, events and other mediums for each opportunity. Extensive market knowledge, commercially orientated editorial expertise, experience of business development and sales management are required.

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Hand-picked articles mix first-person recollections from subjects with individual royal profiles, a special Silver Jubilee Supplement and a letter from the Queen herself. Read of the Queen at 28, ‘smiling unremittingly’ in public so as never to appear ‘displeased’. Remember a young Prince Charles, queuing for his 5s 6d dinner at Cambridge University beneath a portrait of his ancestor, Henry VIII. Hear tales of the late Queen Mother ‘laying a foundation stone as if she has just discovered a new and delightful way of spending an afternoon’.

In her Introduction, Reader’s Digest magazine Editor-In-Chief Gill Hudson explains what a pleasure it is to share these gems from the archive with the world. ‘What I like most about the contemporary accounts—of family life as well as all the pomp and ceremony—are the small-but-telling observations. A 1957 article, for example, comments on the Queen’s facial expression: ‘Without the Smile, relationship between girl-at-desk and the ancestors-on-wall is quickly apparent…this stern-mouthed Hanoverian heritage has been a trial since childhood.’ Or there’s the Queen Mother, dancing with a ’nervous and fumble-footed student at a university ball’, who encourages him by saying, ’Cheer up…You haven’t knocked my tiara off—yet!’’

In the book’s foreword, Jennie Bond explains that ‘Attitudes to the monarchy have undergone something of a revolution in the sixty years that Elizabeth has been our Queen.’ The BBC’s royal correspondent  for 14 years, and author of Elizabeth, an illustrated biography of the Queen and Reporting Royalty goes on to say that, ‘The age of deference has passed, the royal family are held to account and the modern media leave them with few places to hide. Through all of this, support for the monarchy has hardly wavered from a highly respectable 70 per cent plus, and the Queen herself remains constant’.

Reader’s Digest and the Royals: A Jubilee Celebration of the British Royal Family (RRP £9.99; ISBN 978-1-78020-100-9) is available on 28 May 2012.

Speaking with Tom Hawker, Stuart Maconie explains how he first caught the walking bug:

I grew up in the North West, so I’d always gone to the Lake District with mates, fishing, drinking beer and camping. Then one day my wife told me that she’d like to go to the Lake District. I blindly replied that I knew the Lake District like the back of my hand.

But when we got there, she asked me the name of a mountain and I had no idea. I realised that I knew the pubs but I’d never lifted my hind up to the hillside. So we bought some cheap gear from Grasmere post office and pootled to Helvellyn.

When we got to the top I looked through the Wainwright viewfinder and it was a completely different world up there – something that most people never got a chance to see.

And then I just got that buzz – “Where could this all go?”

In Never Mind the Quantocks , a collection of 50 articles from his Country Walking Magazine column, Stuart Maconie tells us of the hills and Fells, lakes and livestock that he has encountered since he began his journeys more than 20 years ago.

Never Mind the Quantocks: How country walking can change your life is available at The Hobby Warehouse.

Extraordinary Weather book shows stunning photos of extreme sights

Snowdrifts as tall as a telegraph pole and cars encrusted in impenetrable ice – these are just some of the examples of unenviable extreme weather showcased in a glossy new book exploiting Britain’s national obsession.

Met office researchers have also captured shimmering ‘seas’ of orange sunrise clouds, a double lightning strike in Florida, and a rare ‘double rainbow’ above Northumberland.

By contrast, a man can be seen going face-to-pylon with a telegraph pole submerged in snow, during a North Dakota snowdrift in March 1966.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Department of Commerce

Photographer Bill Koch said: ‘I believe there is a train under here somewhere.’

A dust storm is shown looming over the small Texas town of Stratford, as is a huge plume of smoke rising above Idaho. The images are collected in Extraordinary Weather, published now by the Met Office and science author Richard Hamblyn.

NASA/courtesy of nasaimages.org

Rob Varley, the Met Office’s operations and service director, said: ‘As the striking photographs in this book attest, the weather in all its guises equally fascinates people around the world.’

Read more: http://www.metro.co.uk/news/893287-extraordinary-weather-book-shows-stunning-photos-of-extreme-sights#ixzz1pHJABrcd

Extraordinary Weather: Wonders of the atmosphere from dust storms to lighting stirkes is available at The Hobby Warehouse.

More than just trains, respected transport author Julian Holland explores the full scope of the steam engine’s contribution to the industrial age in new book Amazing & Extraordinary Facts: The Steam Age (ISBN: 9781446301937; RRP £9.99). Each page delves into the intriguing world of steam, revealing absorbing facts and figures on subjects ranging from Cornish beam engines, steam railway locomotives and road vehicles through to ships, traction engines, and steam rollers and the people who designed them.

From the dawning of the first engine prototypes as far back as 1662, steam mechanics have been a bit of a British obsession. Helped along the way by the inventive minds of James Watt, Richard Trevithick and George Stephenson, steam became the powerhouse that drove the Industrial Revolution in Britain in the late 18th and 19th centuries.

With an active heritage community and the emergence of the ‘Steam Punk’ cultural movement, it is clear that, for some, the passion for steam is as strong as ever. ‘In Britain we are extremely luck to have the most amazing steam preservation movement.’ Observes author Julian Holland when speaking of the nation’s ongoing fascination with all things steam. ‘ Lovingly restored and cared for by all happy bands of mainly volunteer enthusiasts, steam engines can still be seen at work on our waterways, roads and railways, roads and at hundreds of steam events around the country. Britain’s world beating steam heritage is still alive!’

Julian Holland has documented his passion for steam in his many journeys around Britain during the final years of locomotives. Author of has worked in the publishing industry for the last 39 years, coupling his work  with his passion on many occasions, such as The Lost Joy of Railways and Amazing and Extraordinary Facts Trains & Railways .

Brief, accessible and entertaining, Amazing & Extraordinary Facts: Steam Age is the perfect for dipping into. Steam Age is the latest in the Amazing & Extraordinary Facts series, joining a collection of releases commemorating 2012′s important events and ideas. An amazing March 2012 saw the release of Amazing and Extraordinary Fact: Olympics along side Amazing & Extraordinary Facts: Titanic .  While an even more extraordinary April will bring a new title on James Bond.