More new titles from the Sussex Book Club

A Lingering Fear
The fear of the workhouse may be a thing of the past, butthis new book reminds us how recently it disappeared. It shows us what life was like in the 1930s and 1940s in eight Sussex institutions – in Battle, Hastings, Eastbourne, Brighton, Shoreham, Newhaven, Chailey and Uckfield.

Austerity Diary from Lavender Cottage
Those who have read the author’s previous books will probably agree with Joanna Lumley, who describes them as ‘delightful and enthralling, a part of history which, unless she had preserved it, might have blown away, like sand in the desert’. In this diary the now-famous Lavender Cottage occupant, Miss Emilie Crane, reveals intimate details of her daily life, giving us a picture of how one household managed in the difficult economic period that followed the second world war. It includes austerity recipes and a raft of kitchen, gardening and household hints.

Horsfield’s Sussex
Or to give it the proper title: The History Antiquities and Topography of the County of Sussex, by the Rev Thomas Walker Horsfield. A first edition of this seminal 19th century historical work would set you back £600, so £90 for this facsimile paperback edition in two heavy volumes is a snip! It has two copper-engraved frontispieces, two large folding county maps with elevation views, 54 copper-engraved plates and a further 80 woodcuts.

Chichester Murders and Misdemeanours
A look at the dark side of Chichester life, Victorian-style, when nothing was quite as it seemed and a public execution could be an entertaining day out. Murderers, poachers, thieves, pickpockts and vagabonds make regular appearances in these lively pages.

Growing Up in Sussex
This compelling memoir starts with a boy’s journey through the early years of the 1930s: the rag-and-bone man, street lamplighters, Hercule Poirot and, in the background, Hitler. Secondary school (where cane and cricket bat rule and the mustard sandwich fills a hungry corner) is followed by army call-up and combat in Operation Overlord. And after all that, demob and life on the farm.