The ‘friendly invasion’ of American servicemen (and women) began in 1942 and by 1945 around three million had passed through the United Kingdom.

With money in their pockets, a smart uniform, and access to goods the British housewife hadn’t seen in the shops for many years they were generally popular but resented by some. The phrase ‘over-paid, over-sexed, and over here’ being used to describe them in less than complimentary terms.

This booklet was issued to American forces in an attempt to get them acquainted with the British, their country, and their ways, and avoid some of the more obvious misunderstandings that could easily occur without at least a little knowledge of the strange and wonderful British customs.

Covering a diverse range of subjects such as, customs & manners, sports & pastimes, history & language, as well as some important do’s and dont’s, it is a delight to read and goes to show that some things haven’t changed that much in the last 60 years since this was originally produced.

PB - 186x116mm 16pp - £4.99
ISBN - 0-9552723-0-0

Allotment & Garden Guide
A Monthly Guide to Better Wartime Gardening

Produced by the Ministry of Agriculture, the Allotment and Garden Guides were issued monthly throughout 1945. Aimed at the amateur gardener they were to be the final rallying call in the wartime campaign to Dig for Victory. Concentrating on the productive garden, the guides were designed to take the amateur gardener through the basic tasks of each month. Many of the subjects tackled are as relevant now as they were then. How to make a compost heap, when to sow marrow seed, which seeds are they easiest to save, are still popular topics in the modern gardening media. However, other subjects convey the war-time difficulties: seed shortages due to enemy occupation in Europe, regulations on flower growing, and the very real prospect of running out of food next winter.

Packed with additional photographs and illustrations, Twigs Way gives an historical overview to gardening during the Second world war and comments on each month of the guide. Many people still work allotment or vegetable plots that were first established during the war years, 'inheriting' them from a generation that used these guides as their gardening bibles. To read the Guides now is to experience a sense of both the urgency of the war-time garden, and the timelessness of the processes of gardening.

HB - 160pp - £9.99
ISBN 978 0955 272356

A number of exciting other new publications are under production for 2011.

More details will follow but if you would like any further information please contact us.

Interest in life on the Home Front during the Second World War means that the style of the 1940s has never been more popular. People are re-creating the look for plays and films, re-enactments, 1940's themed events, or just because they enjoy dressing in vintage fashions.

The 1940s Look tells you everything you need to know about the fashions of wartime and the impact that rationing, the Utility scheme, changing tastes and the demands of everyday life had on the styles people wore.

People had to 'Make Do and Mend' - with varying degrees of ingenuity and success. Hairstyles, glasses, jewellery, and tattoos were essential in creating your own fashion statement. Women's magazines advised readers on the difficulties of dressing growing children, offered instructions for making clothes and accessories, and hosted debate over whether by dressing up, women were helping or hindering the War Effort.

Thoroughly researched and lavishly illustrated, The 1940s Look tells you how civilian men, women and children dressed - and why they looked the way they did during the Second World War. It draws on contemporary sources including Government advice, periodicals and books, and has an entertaining commentary by Mike Brown.

Mike Brown is an authority on the home front during the Second World War, and is the author of several books, including 'A Child¹s War', 'Put that Light Out', and is co-author of 'The Ration Book Diet' and 'The Wartime House.'

PB - 280x229mm 144pp - £16.99
ISBN - 0-9552723-1-9

Moving forward another decade from his successful The 1940s Look Mike Brown takes an in depth look at the the 1950s - decade of the Coronation, the conquest of Everest, the Festival of Britain, the Suez Crisis, and Britain's first Wimpy Bar.

Britons turned their backs on the privations of the drab war years. The second Elizabethan age had arrived and with it came optimism for a bright future. Breezes of exciting new fashions ruffled through the wardrobes of the nation. Daring styles from overseas gusted into British homes - the Hawaiian shirt and denim jeans from the USA, and a new hair-do called the 'crew cut'.

The winds of fashion soon veered to the Continent with the rise of chique Italian and French styling. But an eclectic British style began to emerge from these influences and with it a whole new breed - the teenager. Premier Harold Macmillan famously summed up the mood of the fifties when he told the country: 'you've never had it so good'.

Read all about the new synthetic wonder fabrics, the Trapeze dress and pedal pushers, teenage heart-throbs, the Teddy Boys' quiff and DA, and drain pipe trousers.

• The 'Fifties' look - Men, Women, Children & Teenagers
• Formal and informal fashions
• Couture house to homemade
• Hairstyles and make-up
• The Figure
• Accessories - Shoes, Socks, Hats, Gloves, Spectacles, Jewellery...........
• A reference and an entertaining guide Author and broadcaster

Mike Brown is an authority on the fashions of the forties and fifties. He is the author of The 1940s Look (Sabrestorm, 2007), A Wartime Christmas, and co-author with his wife Carol of the acclaimed The Ration Book Diet. Mike lives in London.

144 pages pb, 280 x 229mm
Full colour throughout
300+ photographs & illustrations

ISBN: 978-0-9552723-3-2
Price £16.99
Published: 1st September 2008

When the Luftwaffe's Blitz on Britain began in September 1940, people's homes and their contents were destroyed at an alarming rate. Thanks to the bombing, furniture shortages in Britain hit an all time high by 1942. The government responded with a range of affordable furniture - the so-called Utility Furniture Scheme - but only for those that could prove their need.

Author Jon Mills presents a comprehensive guide to the introduction of Utility Furniture, to accompany a facsimile reproduction of the first Utility catalogue that appeared in 1943.

Jon Mills gives a fascinating insight into the privations of the war years and a nostalgic look back for those who remember this sturdy furniture, much of which has survived into the 21st century.

HB - 155x195mm, 36 page
Colour illustrations & photographs throughout
RRP £9.99

ISBN: 978-0-9552723-2-5

Beans as bullets', 'Vegetables for Victory' and 'Cloches against Hitler': these slogans convey just how vital gardening and growing food were to the British war effort during the Second World War. Exhorted to 'Grow More Food', then to 'Dig for Victory', Britain's 'allotment army' was soon out in force, growing as many vegetables as possible in suburban allotments, private gardens, even the grounds of stately homes.

Richly illustrated with contemporary photographs and ephemera relating to the 'Dig For Victory' campaign, this expertly researched, highly engaging and informative account also includes archive images of home front gardening, garden produce and advertisements.

Twigs Way is a professional garden historian, author and freelance lecturer, whose credits include Channel Four's 'Lost Gardens' and, for Sabrestorm Publishing, 'Allotment & Garden Guide -A Monthly Guide to Better Wartime Gardening'. Mike Brown is an author, broadcaster and authority on the Home Front, whose books include 'The 1940s Look', 'The 1950s Look' and 'Air Raids & Ration Books' (Sabrestorm).

HB, 263 x 199mm, 240pp
Colour photographs & illustrations throughout
ISBN: 978-0-9552723-7-0
Price £20.00

Publication date: 1st December 2010

For those born after the Second World War life on the Home Front is often viewed as a rather romantic, or dangerous experience, of air raids, doomed love-affairs, dances, and plucky defiance. Of course all these things happened, but the day-to-day reality of life in wartime Britain was a more mundane struggle, not with the Luftwaffe, but with making ends meet under austerity, rationing, and shortages.

How did you prepare your home and family for the air raids. What were the blackout regulations and how did people cope with them. How did hard-pressed housewives feed their families on ever-tightened rations, and what were the rations and what were the alternatives, how was clothing rationed, how did you furnish, decorate, heat and even clean your house in the face of yet more rationing. How did people travel with the blackout, petrol rationing, road blocks and restrictions? ‘Air Raids and Ration Books’ answers these and many other questions about everyday life on the home front.

This lavishly illustrated book draws on contemporary sources including government advice, periodicals and books, and benefits from an entertaining narrative by authors Mike Brown and Carol Harris.

Mike Brown is an authority on the Home Front during the Second World War and is author of several books, including The 1940s Look, The 1950s Look, and is co-author of Digging for Victory and The Ration Book Diet.
Carol Harris is a journalist who specialises in the history of fashion in the 1930s and 1940s. She is the author of 'Collecting Fashion’ and, 'Women at War: The Home Front', co-author of The Ration Book Diet, and has also contributed to exhibitions at the Imperial War Museum.

HB, 263 x 199mm, 216pp
Colour photographs & illustrations throughout
ISBN: 978-0-9552723-6-3
Price £20.00

Publication date: 1 December 2010