Books
My First Thirty Years: 1895-1925
These are my grandfather’s memoirs. He recounts his childhood in late-Victorian/Edwardian Newport and schooldays – first at preparatory school in Weston-super-Mare, then at Radley College. Aged 18 at the outbreak of the First World War, he became a junior officer in the Welsh Brigade of the Royal Field Artillery. He served throughout the war, chiefly in the Palestine campaign from 1916-1918. After the war he tried several endeavours, including a contract ploughing business in Oxford, before settling to a career in his grandfather’s iron foundry business.
My grandfather wrote these memoirs in the 1970s. He typed the pages on a manual typewriter and bound them into two home-made volumes, illustrated with his own original photographs. It has been a great pleasure for me, digitising his text and photos and researching the background to publish this book.
Paperback (207 pages) and Kindle format.
Poems from Poole
This is a selection of my poems from 2022-2023, many of them inspired by observations in and around the place where I live: Poole in Dorset.
The Poems from Poole are interspersed in this volume with poems inspired by other places, and a few poems exploring Christian themes.
“A great variety of poem types and poem subject matter. Peter Phillips has a wonderful eye for detail, drawing the reader into a deeply-observed scene, and also a love of nature.”
Paperback (79 pages) and Kindle format.
Thomas Phillips and Richard Laybourne:
Two Victorian industrialists who prospered in the boom years of Newport, South Wales
Two baby boys were born in 1825, one in Wiltshire and one in Yorkshire. How did they both come to make their fortunes in Newport, South Wales?
This book traces the lives of two of my great-great-grandfathers, who became successful entrepreneurs – one a brewer, one an engineer – and established family businesses that thrived for over 50 years after they died. This is the story of two lives intertwined with the course of the Victorian industrial revolution that transformed Newport from a small town to a major industrial centre.
Paperback (106 pages) and Kindle format.
A Family in Africa
This is my father’s account of our six-month journey across Africa in 1972, when I was 8 years old.
In addition to the African journey, this volume contains accounts of some of my father’s other adventures including a dog sleigh tour in Norway, canoeing in Ireland, mountains and caves in the Pyrenees, climbing in the Dolomites and holidays in Portugal and Mexico.
Co-edited by me, published by Silver Lining Books
Paperback (402 pages)
From South Wales to New South Wales by Train
This is my father’s account of taking the longest possible train journey in the world after his retirement – from Carmarthen, South Wales across Europe, Russia, China and then Australia to Sydney, New South Wales.
The book also contains account of three more rail journeys around Europe over the next five years, to Sicily, Lithuania, Poland, Hungary and Rumania. Discover his frustration with windows that don’t open (how else can you take photos?), fellow sleeper companions who don’t rise at the crack of dawn (delaying breakfast) and the strangeness of changing the wheels of the train half way through a journey (couldn’t they have agreed on a gauge that worked for both countries?). Add in his engineer’s fascination for all things mechanical – monorails, trams, underground trains, buses – and the many friends he stayed with and you have a heady mix. Enjoy his rail travel diaries.
Co-edited by me, published by Silver Lining Books
Paperback (285 pages)
