Council housing in Nottingham is an essential part of the city’s history and identity. The slums of the nineteenth century laid the foundations for the surge of construction activity in the twentieth. Between the wars, Nottingham was recognised as one of the largest and fastest builders of council housing in the country, with huge garden city estates pushing at the city boundaries. During the 1960s and 1970s attention turned to the inner city, and by 1981 around half of Nottingham’s population lived in council tenancies. The Right to Buy discount of the 1980s heralded a new area of decreasing stock, massive sales and modest rebuilding, then the birth of Nottingham City Homes in 2005 opened a new chapter in the story. Since 2010 Nottingham City Homes and Nottingham City Council have been building council housing again with renewed vigour and confidence.

In Nottingham, council housing is popular; it is widely recognised as something that has improved the lives of countless people.

Chris Matthews is a topographer, local historian and graphic designer who lectures at Lincoln University. He leads local history walks in the Nottingham area, and cowrote Towns in Britain with Adrian Jones.

These Seven is available in Nottingham from Five Leaves Bookshop, Waterstones, Bromley House Library and at The Bookcase in Lowdham.

Mail order copies are available post-free in the UK from Five Leaves by credit card payment on 0115 8373097 (10–5.30 Monday-Saturday, 12–4 Sunday) or by PayPal to bookshop@fiveleaves.co.uk or by cheque to Five Leaves, 14a Long Row, Nottingham NG1 2DH

International orders are available post free from www.bookdepository.com/These-Seven/9781910170205

These Seven Nottingham writers cover a lot of ground. John Harvey visits his traditional world of crime with a story more domestic than usual, Megan Taylor spends time in Old Market Square waiting for someone whose arrival might change her life, graphic novelist Brick imagines a Nottingham version of Simeon the Stylite living at the top of the Aspire sculpture, Paula Rawsthorne finds that being a child of a refugee brings its own problems, and Alison Moore realises that a weekend away is not always idyllic. Meantime Shreya Sen Handley's Indian family discovers something going on at the bottom of their garden, and Alan Sillitoe is back on the streets of Nottingham, where this all began.

Anarchy journal ran for 118 issues, over ten years, as a monthly addition to the weekly Freedom magazine. The print run was never more than 3,000 copies, with sales rarely reaching that amount, but it was influential, introducing new writers and new subjects to the left in this country and abroad. Most of the issues were designed by Rufus Segar and the journal was famed for its covers.

The Nottingham issue included Alan Sillitoe, who was already a distinguished novelist, the biographer, poet and novelist Philip Callow and the journalist Ray Gosling. Harold Drasdo was, and is, a well known authority on climbing while Paul Ritter became the Chief Planner of Perth, Australia.

Anarchy 38, originally published in 1964, has been something of a collector's item for many years and is republished by permission of Freedom Press.

Freedom Press is an anarchist publishing house in Whitechapel, London, United Kingdom. Founded in 1886, it is the largest anarchist publishing house in the country and the oldest of its kind in the English-speaking world. Freedom Press came out of a circle of anarchists with international connections formed around the Londonbased radical firebrand Charlotte Wilson. Among this founding group were Nikola Chaikovski, Francesco Saverio Merlino, and celebrated anarchist-communist Peter Kropotkin.

The scars left by the 1984/85 "Great Strike for Jobs" are still raw in Nottinghamshire, thirty years later. There, the majority of the National Union of Mineworkers did not support their union, working throughout the strike, later forming the breakaway Union of Democratic Miners. Look Back in Anger puts these events into context, giving a history of the coalfields through the twentieth century and the first comprehensive overview of the strike year in Nottinghamshire.

Harry Paterson has interviewed striking and working miners, Coal Board officials, women active in opposing the pit closures, Council officials and others. The book includes information that has never before appeared in print, alongside memorabilia and personal letters from the period.

In 1954, a local historian, RM Butler, described Nottinghamshire as an ‘archaeological blackspot’. In this book, Mark Patterson proves him wrong by pulling together all that is known about the county during the centuries of Roman occupation.

For instance:

There were Roman towns near East Bridgford (Margidunum), Willoughby-on-the-Wolds (Vernemetum), Thorpe (Ad Pontem), Brough (Crococolana), Littleborough (Segelocum) and Newark.

There were Roman villas at Barton-in-Fabis, Southwell, Mansfield Woodhouse, Oldcotes, Flawford, Car Colston, Cromwell, Thurgarton and Epperstone.

The Romans built forts at Broxtowe, Osmanthorpe and Scaftworth, and temporary camps at Calverton, Farnsfield, Gleadthorpe and Holme.

Somewhere along the River Trent east of Nottingham there was a Roman bridge, but its precise location remains a mystery.

There was probably a temple to the Roman gods at Redhill, where a lead tablet was discovered entreating Jupiter to torment a thief until he repaid the money he had stolen.

Roman Nottinghamshire is an authoritative yet accessible examination of the evidence of Roman civilisation in the county, and a fascinating narrative of how this evidence came to light and has been (mis)interpreted over the years, sometimes leading to controversy. Patterson is driven by a sense of wonder at the influence that the ghosts of ancient Romans continue to exert on the Nottinghamshire landscape:

"If you drive along the A46 Fosse Way, or follow the road from Littleborough to Bawtry, or the road from Derby to Long Eaton, you are following routes laid out by Roman army road surveyors."

His book is the result of a year’s investigation and research. It takes the reader back to a time before Nottinghamshire existed, vividly describing Roman ways of life, and brings us back to the present, showing how we can see the marks of Roman occupation all around us.

Mark Patterson was born and brought up in County Durham, and began working as a journalist in 1991. He is particularly interested in environmental issues, and has a fascination with the Fosse Way. He has a BA from Manchester University and a BSc from Nottingham Trent University. He lives in Nottingham.

Crime short stories by Catherine Arnold, David Belbin, Robert Cordell. Michael Eaton, Raymond Flynn, John Harvey, HRF Keating, Robert McMinn, Stanlet Middleton, Peter Mortimer, Brendan Murphy, Julie Myerson, Frank Palmer, Alan Sillitoe and Keith Wright - all from the crime-writing city of Nottingham.

"...there's a lot more than simple villainy in this thoroughly varied but uniformly atmospheric collection" - Mail on Sunday

"...sure to be a collector's item" - Crime Time

Also by David Belbin: Dead Guilty, Dead Teachers Don't Talk

Local residents and tourists will be attracted by these linked walks. Full directions are given for public transport and for the car driver. Keith Taylor tells the walker what to look out for, turning every ramble into a nature walk.

Keith Taylor has written a book on foxes, further walking books and on local history. He is a former Countryside Ranger and lives in Nottinghamshire.

"(the author) comes up with some surprise adventures (and) is a source of unusual information." - Derby Evening Telegraph.

"No Peak District stuff here, just unsweaty, blister-free short jaunts over the gentler gradients of Charnwood Forest and the Trent and Erewash valleys. Taylor's colourful history and nature notes raise his book above the genre average." - Nottingham Evening Post

Poetry: the Nottingham collection includes 52 contributors, all living, born or otherwise connected with Nottinghamshire. A companion volume to “Sunday Night and Monday Morning” – a collection of new fiction by Nottinghamshire writers.

Contributors include:

Catherine Byron
Philip Callow
Andy Croft (Smokestack Press)
Duncan Glen (Akros Press)
John Harvey
John Lucas
Jamie McKendrick
Stanley Middleton
Blake Morrison
Graham Mort
Peter Mortimer (Iron Press)
Henry Normal
Tom Paulin
Peter Porter
Peter Sansom (The North)
Vernon Scannell
Alan Sillitoe
Matthew Welton
John Hartley Williams
Gregory Woods
and others


"...a great book to dip in to, a hymn to a place and a manifesto for poetry that is regional, democratic and plain... There are plenty of famous names here... others deserve to be better known... but the book's real delights are poems by younger poets." - Morning Star

"This is what good anthologies should be: surprising, deft and graceful. And a great cover!" - Staple

John Lucas has recently retired as Professor of English at Nottingham Trent University. He is a former poetry editor of the New Statesman and has written many critical works including England and Englishness, and, for Five Leaves, The Radical Twenties. He also runs Shoestring Press.

Sunday Night and Monday Morning features new short stories by 16 writers born or living in Nottinghamshire. All contributors are published by mainstream publishers and have national reputations. Most of the stories were written specially for this book. Settings range from the American Deep South to Lithuania, inner city Nottingham to medieval battlefields.

Contributors:

David Belbin – author of Love Lessons
Stephen Booth – author of The Dead Place
Clare Brown – author of The Creation Myths
Elizabeth Chadwick – author of Shadows and Strongholds
Stephan Collishaw – author of Amber
Tom Cox – author of Educating Peter
Matt Haig – author of The Last Family in England
Robert Harris – author of Fatherland
John Harvey – author of Ash and Bone
Clare Littleford – author of Death Duty
Jon McGregor – author of If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things
Eve Makis – author of Eat, Drink and Be Married
Julie Myerson – author of Home
Kat Pomfret – author of Paradise Jazz
and introducing Nicola Monaghan whose first novel appears from Chatto & Windus in 2006

"This play on words from arguably Nottingham's most famous recent contributor to literature heralds a collection of short stories to mark the tenth anniversary of Five Leaves Press, a small independent Nottingham publishing house. The 16 stories collected here make you realise what a wealth of talented writers either live or were born in the County... this is an exciting and diverse collection with something for everyone." - Nottingham Evening Post

James Urquhart reviews fiction for the Daily Telegraph, the Independent and the Financial Times.

Stanley Middleton is one of Britain's most distinguished novelists. This collection includes three previously unpublished short stories and a lecture on old age by the Booker Prize-winning author. There are essays by A.S Byatt, Ronald Blythe and others, together with an in-depth interview in celebration of Stanley Middleton's long and brilliant career.

Also available from Five Leaves is HOLIDAY, the author's Booker Prize Winner.