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My Early Years Down Under, by John (Jack) Edge, is an autobiographical account of an English migrant trying to find work in Western Australia at the beginning of the Great Depression, 1929–1930. Jack, who had been working in his home town of Leicester, dreamed  of escaping to the open spaces of Australia and took an assisted passage out there. However, Western Australia had been hit hard by the depression and so Jack had to turn his hand to whatever (honest) work he could find. Two years later, he had to return to his job in Leicester. Nevertheless, this account, written many years afterwards, records his experience in vivid detail. The book was first published in 2009 and then a revised edition in 2011.

2011 (revised edition), ISBN 978-0-9548390-8-6, Price £12.50

A Destiny Defined, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Elizabeth Siddal in Hastings, by Jenny Ridd, tells the story of the poet/painter and his muse during their happy days in Hastings, where they were married. It subsequently goes on to consider the later, less happy, times, leading up to Lizzie’s death and eventual exhumation, so that Gabriel could recover the book of poems he had cast into her grave. The author Jenny Ridd and her husband lived at 5 High Street, where Lizzie had stayed and this prompted Jenny’s interest in the couple. The book also includes, together for the first time, three drawings of Lizzie made on the same day by Gabriel, Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon and Anna Mary Howitt at Scalands, the farm house owned by Barbara’s family.

2008, ISBN 978-9548390-4-8, Price £10.00

A Survivor’s Story, Prisoner of War to Parish Priest, by John Read, tells how John, working in a bank and a Sergeant in the Straits Settlement Volunteer Force in Singapore in 1941, was captured by the Japanese and sent first to work on the notorious Burma railway and then in a zinc smelting factory in Japan. The book falls into three parts, first John’s early history, then an account, remarkable for its lack of bitterness, of his captivity and finally his life as a priest after the war. John’s last parish was Pett in East Sussex, where he is still fondly remembered by many. He died in 2004. The book is illustrated with a number of John’s own drawings.

2007, ISBN 978-0-9548390-3-1, Price £10.00

A Changing Shore, An Illustrated Account of Winchelsea Beach by Michael and Ruth Saville, charts the development of this small seaside settlement since the 1930s, when it was called Dogs Hill or ‘thirty-one’ after the nearest Martello Tower. The book covers the coast itself, nearby Camber Castle, the development and silting up of what was known as Smeaton’s Harbour, the loss of the lifeboat Mary Stanford and development of the Rye Harbour Nature Reserve.

This book is no longer available and has been replaced by the revised edition/

2006, ISBN 978-0-9548390-2-4, Price £12.00

Pett in Sussex, the first book published by EPS, is by John Taylor and gives a history of this small Sussex village, located between Hastings and Winchelsea and overlooking Rye Bay. The Royal Military Canal has its western end here and the beach at Pett Level was once the site of five Martello towers.

2004, ISBN 978-0-9548390-0-0 (0-9548390-0-5) Price £15.00