More new titles from the Sussex Book Club

The Restless Miller
Subtitled 'Scenes from rural life in bygone Sussex, Surrey and Hampshire’, David Johnston’s true story of a well-to-do miller who fell to the level of a pauper and was buried in an unmarked grave takes in the borderlands of Sussex, Surrey and Hampshire. The book is thronged with a lost world of farmers, auctioneers, innkeepers, wine merchants and smugglers – a gripping follow-up to his well received memoir City Streets to Sussex Lanes.

I Spy – What and Why on the South Downs Way
This full-colour 48-page booklet is packed with sights and curiosities, all given map references. Some are unmissable (Arundel Castle, Lancing College Chapel) while others you’ll have to hunt for. Do you know where to find a signpost in Latin near Bignor, a sign recording the flight of the future Charles II through Sussex or the memorial to a local farmer, Walter Langmead, and his wife? A great idea, wonderfully pulled off.

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.

Nymans: the Story of a Sussex Garden
Shirley Nicholson’s book, now out in paperback, is an illustrated history of the beautiful garden at Handcross. Ludwig Messel began its development in 1890, and his family retained ownership until his granddaughter, the Countess of Rosse, bequeathed it to the National Trust in 1954.