Nick

I am Shire’s Publisher. I grew up in Abingdon-on-Thames in the days when it was famous for its MG car factory and busy RAF station, and started my book collection at a young age, on some natty spur shelving put up on my Sandersons Jungle wallpaper. The books – lots of Anthony Buckeridge’s ‘Jennings’ books, assorted boyish non-fiction and Shire’s ‘Discovering London for Children’ – shared space with Corgi cars, Britains tractors and Hornby locomotives, bought from Larner’s toy shop, or Knight’s model shop in the town, whenever I had saved up enough money in my blue Midland Bank elephant. It was in those early days that my interest in everything historical, and – it would seem – a Bennettesque preoccupation with trade names, was born.

History has been an abiding love throughout my life. It was always my favourite subject at school and I read history at university. But I was never gripped by political shenanigans or military exploits, rather it is the history of people and of things that has always interested me. Maybe I was always destined to work for Shire?

I have a magpie-like interest in any shiny subject, and a frustrating butterfly-like tendency to flit between them quite unpredictably, usually changing direction completely before I have managed to accomplish anything useful. There are a few subjects that always seem to pop up, including architecture, early aircraft, church history, classical music, vintage cars, clocks, railways and the decorative arts. My latest toy is a 1927 Austin Seven ‘Chummy’ – I am telling myself that it is as much fun in pieces on the garage floor as it is on the open road... It is not impossible that entries on any of the above subjects will occasionally appear in The Journal, alongside random musings on subjects connected, and completely unconnected, to books that I am working on.

The Shire book that I would most like to be stuck in a lift with is John Bly’s ‘Discovering English Furniture’, currently out of print, but I’m working on that. If I inherited a fortune I’d buy a 1920s Vauxhall 30-98 sports car, and an English Bull Terrier.