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NEWLY REPRINTED BY HARLEQUIN PRESS

CHESIL BEACH

a Peopled Solitude

Chesil Beach is unique: a bank of pebbles stretching for sixteen miles along the Dorset coast, from the Isle of Portland to West Bay.

It looks a lonely landscape, deserted and unchanging. Yet there have always been people living here, concealed behind the shingle barrier. Poaching, smuggling and wrecking were common practices, but it has also sheltered undercover agents, experimental communities and hush-hush weapon testing. D-Day soldiers left for France from this coast, and the Spanish Armada battled in its waters.

The sea provides rich pickings, but can become an enemy, a devastatingly destructive force. The seabed is crowded with shipwrecks, and in 1824 the villages of Fleet and Chiswell were swept away overnight, in the worst disaster ever to hit Lyme Bay. Chesil Beach itself is vulnerable – to exploitation as well as weather.

While the geology, and the birds, beasts and flowers of Chesil Beach have been closely studied, that other species, the human, has received far less attention –

until now.

Price £13.95 (post free inland)

 

OTHER TITLES IN PRINT FROM HARLEQUIN by JUDITH STINTON

 

WEYMOUTH AND MR. PUNCH

Mr. Punch came to Weymouth in Victorian times and has stayed there ever since. He took his place on the beach among the minstrels, pierrots and concert parties, outlasting every one of them.

This book traces the performing lives of Weymouth’s Punch & Judy men. It tells how Punch and Pierrot travelled from Italy through France and into England. It is the first account of their origins for twenty years, and the only one to explore them through the history of a single resort.

Weymouth would never have developed into a major resort were it not for King George III who holidayed in the town for sixteen years: attending the Theatre Royal on the Esplanade, bathing in the sea and taking the waters in the little spas which ringed the town. For without water too there would be no Weymouth.

The book is also a celebration of Weymouth, a unique place in the history of the seaside and of popular entertainment, and in literary life.

Price £10.00 (post free inland)

 

THE WAY TO DO IT: FRANK EDMONDS PUNCH & JUDY MAN

The first-ever biography of a Punch & Judy man, The Way to Do It explores the life of Frank Edmonds, who worked Weymouth Beach for fifty years. His story is told with the colourful collaboration of his family and friends. The book describes what it was like to perform on the sands in all weathers, enduring the rain, the winds and the tight-fisted punters – as well as the golden days of glorious sunshine.

Along the coast from Weymouth, other Punch & Judy men entertained on other Dorset beaches. Every show is different, every showman (or woman) makes his own interpretation of the play. The Way to Do It discusses performers and the variety of their performances in neighbouring Swanage, Lyme Regis and West Bay.

With over ninety illustrations, many of them previously unpublished.The book also includes that rare discovery, a transcript of the Edmonds family show, which dates back to Edwardian times.

Price £13.95 (post free inland)