This series of softback books was borne from original research from this part of England which was submitted for inclusion into the Imperial War Museums 'Defence Of Britain Project' . That project was little more than a descriptive database but these books are superbly detailed and illustrated with both artwork and photographs and although expensive represent excellent value for money with unrivalled coverage of home defences throughout fourteen local authority districts covering some 180 local parishes .
Please see website for more details of both the books and their area of cover and please note that some editions may not be immediately available ; www.defenceofnorthyorkshireandcleveland.co.uk/
Youth is wasted on the young !
The following user(s) said Thank You: PETERTHEEATER
A number of archives have copies of the work for the DOB project but this must be the first published version. It's a shame lottery money wasn't used to create books for the whole country - something they may regret by 2039
I recall downloading all the components of the database but by then I no longer had a copy of MS Access. I gather some bombing range features were recorded some correctly some incorrectly. Excel can do relational databases but it is very clumsy and can't produce a nice query based report.
No Amount Of Evidence Will Ever Persuade An Idiot (probably not Mark Twain)
A bit of background information about the books , the originator and leading light behind the project is John Harwood who lives in the Esk Valley near Whitby and who did secure some funding for the original books and a publishing deal was struck with a York company . As people who frequent this forum and others like it will know it is very much a niche subject and therefore a niche market and I think book sales were not as expected to say the least . Does this situation ring any bells with fellow ARG members !
The publishing was brought 'in-house' and Stuart McMillan took up a lot of work to turn the manuscripts around and add artwork and photographs to make them what they are now , truly unique books which have expanded with the help of a group of local volunteers researching the far flung corners of North Yorkshire , looking into every pillbox , air-raid shelter or building with any wartime connection with them all being added into the books . Examples of the artwork can be seen in the ' Book Contents' section and then by clicking on individual volumes with the Lower Tees Valley Volume 5 section showing the now sadly demolished missile storage and testing site at the former RAF Middleton St George now Teesside Airport .
Two small caveats , to save costs the books are printed on demand when a large enough order has been taken which may lead to a delay in receiving a book and this is advised at the bottom of the 'Shop' section . Secondly due to the ill health of John Harwood all the compiling and formatting now falls to Stuart which takes up a lot of time and some text errors do and have crept in but this should not detract from the superb information within the books .
And finally , I have purchased all of my own copies !
I recently attended two talks given by Stuart McMillan and took some photographs of his artwork which is fantastic . To date only around 6 volumes of the projected 12 to 15 have been published and he hope to complete all of the remaining volumes in the coming months with a view to having them all available for purchase by the summer . Well he did !
Once a publication date is announced I will post it on the forum and I have attached some poor copies of his artwork below .
Youth is wasted on the young !
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