It is impossible to introduce
Holywell House Publishing without first introducing myself since I set
it up and run it with my wife from our home in Holywell Hill, St Albans.
My name is William A Forster (but
please call me Bill) and I am a retired publisher (the University of
Hertfordshire Press was my baby and is now a healthy teenager). I
started my own imprint in 2009 to publish a new edition of a book about
the elderly destroyer on which my father, Lt(E) William Redvers Forster
RNR (1900-75), served from 1944-6.
A
Hard Fought Ship: the story of HMS Venomous was written by
Robert J. Moore the former CO of TS Venomous,
the Sea Cadet Corp unit in Loughborough, a town as far away from the
sea as one can get in Britain. Throughout the 1980s Bob tracked down
most of the surviving officers and many of the ratings, interviewed
them at length and set their accounts against the backdrop of the
actions in which Venomous took
part between launch in 1919 and scrapping in 1948.
It was self-published in 1990 as
a 160 page A5 book with poor quality illustrations on a cheap paper and
with a binding which soon fell apart but it brought HMS Venomous
alive and although it was not reviewed or sold through the book trade
the print run of 300 quickly sold out. When I phoned Bob in 2006 and
asked if I could buy a copy I was told it had been out of print for
many years. Rather rashly and without giving it much thought I said
that I would publish a new edition.
This took longer than expected,
initially because I insisted that I received a digital manuscript on CD
and Bob hated computers. Then, tragically, Bob died aged 63 within a
few months of retiring and I was left without an author. Bob had met
Captain John Rodgaard USN through the Nelson Society, they had become
good friends and when Bob died I asked John if he would take over and
he agreed.
The heart of the book remains the
interviews Bob conducted but John had brought to the book his wider
knowledge of naval history and warfare gained from forty one years
service with the USN. He was, however, handicapped by living in
Washington. As well as being editor and publisher I gradually took on a
research role making many visits to the National Archives at Kew and
the library of the Imperial War Museum in London. With the help of the
Internet I tracked down and interviewed many more of the men who had
served on Venomous and
amassed a unique collection of some 300 previously unpublished
photographs taken aboard Venomous
in wartime.
The new edition is three times
the length of the old and has 170 photographs. It was launched at the
RN Museum at Portsmouth in April, has been praised by reviewers and is
selling so well that it seems inevitable that it too will soon be out
of print.
Future plans
Holywell House is a start up
publisher with a single title but further titles on maritime subjects are being considered and in Spring 2014 it will publish the life of a typical marine
engineer in the Merchant Navy as Forty Years at Sea: a voyage with my father.
This is a brave, perhaps unwise attempt, to tell the story of
ships and shipping in the twentieth century through the life of a
typical marine engineer, my father, but comments I have received from
booksellers as well as friends make me think it might be achievable.
Finally,
I ought to explain that the engraving below is not that of our family
home where Holywell House Publishing is based but the former home of
the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough before they moved to Blenheim
Palace. It was demolished in 1837 and replaced by a modest row of mid
Victorian terraced cottages.
Bill Forster
Holywell House Publishing
88 Holywell Hill, St
Albans, Hertfordshire AL1 1DH, Britain
http://holywellhousepublishing.co.uk
Telephone: +44 1727 838595 contact online
