What's happening around Anne Loader Publications?

We were very sad to learn today of the death of another of our elderly authors.

Les Cooper, who wrote "Over My Shoulder" and "Another's war", died on 4th December 2011. His very well-attended funeral was at Crewe Crematorium on 16th December.

Les was almost 90 years old. A staunch member of the Labour Party, he had served on Crewe and Nantwich Borough Council from 1973 and was Mayor of Crewe from 1996-97. In 1999 he was admitted to the Roll of Honorary Aldermen.

He spent all his working life in Crewe Railway Works and his books portray everyday life from the late 1920s until the end of the Second World War. The Crewe he describes has gone for ever - especially the vast and sometimes hellish Works which dominated the centre of the town and the lives of its inhabitants.

These two books were originally printed and published separately in 1996 by Crewe and Nantwich Borough Council and sold in aid of Cllr Cooper's Mayor's Charity. The editing, layout and design were done voluntarily by Anne Loader when she was working temporarily as the press officer for the borough council, after having been made redundant from the editorship of the Crewe Guardian. The council's limited edition of the books sold out rapidly and to keep them available to the public we later published them in a Léonie Press omnibus edition entitled "The Way We Were".

In the summer, we were invited by a friend to give a talk in November to Hartford Methodist Ladies' Fellowship, and agreed happily. After forgetting all about it, suddenly the due date of 15th November seemed very close and we had to decide what to do. In 2002 we had done a talk called "In the heart of France" to the same group, about the social history of the area of the Limousin where our house is situated, and we wanted this one to be different. We had also been asked to mention our ghost, Marguerite, this time.

Nine years ago, we had used an overhead projector and had spent ages in advance printing transparencies. This time Anne turned to the free Open Source software, LibreOffice Impress, an alternative to Microsoft's Powerpoint, and taught herself how to use it for this talk, which we had decided would be a modern slide-show. We called it "Life in a small French village" and borrowed a computer-linked projector and a big screen for the evening.

We knew that many members of the group were elderly and probably hard of hearing, so Anne put a short caption at the bottom of each "slide" so that even if they couldn't hear the commentary very well, they would know what was going on. We started by showing photographs of the house and talking about the family we had bought it from. Then we showed the audience what we have been doing this year, especially with regard to the garden, and took them on a conducted tour of the commune and its heritage. Finally we talked about the historical exhibitions we have put on, and encouraged them to make sure that all their old photographs were properly annotated.

There was a very fruitful corollary to doing the work on the talk. Jack wanted to check an aspect of the sad death outside Therezin concentration camp of Marguerite's son, Alain, and looked again the research that we had done in the late 1990s. Alain had been in the Resistance as a pharmacy student at the University of Clermont Ferrand, which during the war also incorporated the University of Strasbourg that had been evacuated from the Occupied Zone to the Auvergne.

In 1996 we had relied on library books for background information as well as a wonderful chance encounter which led us to the curator of the museum at Therezin. He had told us the bare details of Alain's imprisonment and death.

Fifteen years later there is a now vast amount of information available on the Internet and a couple of days' further research revealed not only reams of background facts, but two eye-witness accounts of the events in which Alain was caught up. One was by a woman who had been a classmate of his when he was arrested by the Gestapo in November 1943, who mentioned him by name, and the other was from a man who had been on the death march with him from a satellite camp of Flossenburg concentration camp to Therezin in April and May 1945. Both witnesses are now at least 90 years old – if they are still alive - and gave their testimonies in about 2000. We will try to contact the second one, although this may be very difficult, to see if he remembers anything about Alain. More than 800 prisoners started the death march and only 26 survived. Alain, tragically, was one of the last to die. He is believed to have collapsed from starvation and exhaustion and then been "polished off" by a guard.

Today we received the printed copy of "Footprints of an Irish Soldier" by Kit Clay, which we have helped to publish. It is based on the diaries of her father, Tom Finn, who joined the British Army in 1934 and served in 1st Battallion of the Manchester Regiment in Egypt, Palestine and Singapore. He was captured by the Japanese when Singapore fell on February 15th 1942 and spent the rest of the war as a POW.

You will have read the book to discover how Tom faced the terrifying prospect of being a Japanese prisoner of war, not knowing from day to day how long he would remain in captivity, or even if he would survive to tell the tale.

We are not stocking any copies of the book and it is only obtainable directly from Kit Clay.

Once again, we have some very sad news. Victor Dilworth, author of the lovely "Happy Days and Heartbreak Days", died peacefully on April 20th at his nursing home in Northampton, aged 87. He had been in failing health for some time.

His book describes his very early childhood in the 1920s on the family farm at Hinstock, near Market Drayton in Shropshire and captures wonderfully the thoughts and feelings of a small boy slowly beginning to understand the rural world around him.

When the book was published in 2003 it was very well-received, especially in Hinstock where the local post office did such a roaring trade that the owners contemplated giving up selling vegetables and using the sales space for books!

When he was interviewed on Radio Northampton about the book when it was launched, Victor was such a hit with the programme presenter, Anna Murby, that instead of the ten minutes originally allotted to him they chatted for nearly twice as long.

Subsequently, Victor wrote a follow-up piece about his first days at senior school and other snippets of memories. We hope to add these to any subsequent e-book version of the original title that we will bring out.

Victor's funeral is on Friday 6th May, 12.30pm at Milton Crematorium, Northampton. Flowers should be sent to: Wilkinson & Son, Funeral Directors, 30 Grove Road, Northampton, NN1 3LQ (Tel 01604 637852).

Today Royal Mail has applied its now annual increase in postal charges so as we charge postage and package at cost our prices have had to rise to cover them. The Royal Mail increases range from 10 to 13.9% for small packets to zero for uninsured parcels up to 2kg, where there is strong competition from the carriers.

A further complication, introduced earlier in the year, has been the application of VAT to insured parcels which makes the whole cost of the sending the parcel Vatable. This has resulted in price rises of over 30% in some cases.

We have to say that we find it very annoying that we have to pay - and pass on to you - such large increases to protect ourselves against Royal Mail failing to carry out the job for which we have already paid them to do - taking reasonable care of the packet/parcel and delivering it to the address to which it has been sent.

In theory there is basic compensation available for normal packets and parcels - "maximum payable being the lower of the market value of the item and statutory maximum of 100 x 1st Class stamps" - but getting it is another matter. In spite of a reminder letter, payment has still not been received for a parcel of books sent to the Agent for the Copyright Libraries on 6th April 2009 which was lost!

In addition, in the last year the cost of the packaging materials has increased to the point where we will now have to charge more for them too to cover our costs. Sorry!

Our very good friend Richard Kelsall was an invaluable help, with his wife Pat, in sending out book orders for Anne Loader Publications when we were out of the country. He died in January 2010. We are therefore very pleased to pass on the information that Northwich and District Heritage Society, of which he was a past chairman, has decided to name the first talk of each year "The Richard Kelsall Memorial Lecture" in his memory.

Fradley Players will be joining forces with Lichfield Poets and Lichfield Players on July 2 to present a one-night charity performance tribute to much-loved former member Jan Green.

"A Show for Jan" will be staged at Fradley Village Hall in aid of St Giles Hospice and The National Arboretum. It will be "a quickfire performance showcasing some of Jan's own poetry and writing, music, excerpts from plays and much more – all read and performed by her friends and colleagues". Tickets are £10 and the event starts at 7.30pm.

For more information visit: http://www.fradleyplayers.co.uk

Jan had been researching a history of Fradley for several years before her untimely death from cancer in October 2010. It would have been published by Léonie Press.

We have just reprinted seven of our books. After many years of holding their prices Poplar Services of St Helens, our printers, have now had to pass on the rising costs they are facing. As a result the income we get from the sale of some of the early very low priced books will no longer cover the reprinting costs and sadly we will have to increase the prices of those books when we have sold out of the previous printings.