Books

The Ladies of Miller’s, Dale House Press. £7.50

In 1939 two remarkable sisters purchased the former home of a miller in Lewes High Street and converted the stables into an art centre. From there, with the help of their Bloomsbury friends, the ladies kept the flag of culture flying during the war. Afterwards they set up the influential Miller’s Press, encouraging artists to experiment in lithography. This entertaining account documents the ladies’ earlier years and the tragedy that inspired their artistic commitment, as well as describing cultural life in Lewes during and after the war.

A Lewes Diary, 1916-44 by Mrs Henry Dudeney, Dale House Press, illustrated. £9.99 NEW REVISED EDITION

Alice Dudeney’s delightfully malicious diaries were withheld from publication for some 40 years. She vividly describes her tragi-comic marriage to the mathematician, Henry Dudeney, her career as a novelist, her lover and two world wars, as well as her forays into High Society through her friendship with Sir Philip Sassoon. This new edition contains further revelations.

A Box of Toys – An Anthology of Lewes Writings, Dales House Press. £7.50. 

A sparkling selection that gives a flavour of the special town of Lewes. Fact and fiction is arranged in a way that may provoke reflection with some items appearing in print for the first time. includes Daisy Ashford, Jane Austen, William Cobbett, John Evelyn, Eve Garnett, Gideon Mantell, Tom Paine, Thomas Turner and Virginia Woolf.

Defying the Demon – Smallpox in Sussex, Dale House Press, illustrated. £9.99.

A dramatic and entertaining account with poignant use of letters and diaries. The people on Sussex bravely risked the process of inoculation introduced by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu while not greeting Edward Jenner’s later discovery of vaccination with wholehearted enthusiasm. The 1950s Brighton outbreak is detailed is is the possibility of the virus becoming a weapon of mass destruction.

Ragged Lands, Viscountess Wolseley’s College for Lady Gardeners, Glynde – Dale House Press, illustrated. £7.50. 

In 1906 when gardening was not considered a suitable career for women, France Wolseley, daughter of the famous soldier, set up a pioneering college for lady students. She ran it on military lines, transforming acres of bare chalk land into a beautiful Italian-style garden. This new expanded edition describes the college and the personalities who contributed to its rise and fall and explores the reasons for Frances Wolselely’s eventual disinheritance by her parents.

Treasure Chest, A Seaford Anthology, Dale House Press, illustrated in colour. £9.99. 

Seaford has a turbulent history as a former Cinque Port and rotten borough. This attractively varied anthology ranges from the theft of St Lewinna’s bones in 1058 to the more recent declaration of Wendy, the Seaford talking cat.

Fiction: Open the Cage, Kindle e-Book, 2012. £3.90. 

Elizabeth is in hospital in a coma while she is unable to move or communicate, she can still hear, a fact not appreciated by all those looking after her. In a funny, moving novel Elizabeth reviews her life, witnesses the hospital scandals and hopes to be released from her ‘cage’.