Scratching Shed Publishing

By Tom Kitching

Tom Kitching is one of England’s leading traditional fiddle players.

He has worked as a solo performer, band member, dance caller, violin teacher, and street busker. That last element – the busking – was an afterthought, something to be phased out as he built a career in music.

But the busking bug wouldn’t go away. Beyond the music and the collecting hat, perhaps fiddling through the streets of England could be a key to finding out who the English really are, how they view themselves and how they deal with change. Is there anything that ties together people across England’s many cultural divides, from neat Cotswold villages hugging village greens to former mining villages huddled beside abandoned pits, from multicultural city to Anglo-Saxon market town?

Armed with a violin, a Northern sensibility and a love of life in all its troubling richness, Tom took an 18-month journey through England to find out.

This isn’t really a book about busking, though. It’s about people, place, and that elusive beast – Englishness. On Tom’s street-level odyssey, the lines between friend and stranger blur, informality reigns, and chance encounters make a mockery of careful planning.

As the seasons change and the tally of busking towns grows, the complex mosaic called England confronts its fly-on-the-wall observer with the challenge – define me if you dare.

With an introduction by Barry Hearn

Darts fans will not want to miss this official commemoration of the PDC World Darts Championship – which enters its 26th year in December 2018.

Readers will discover a vast collection of statistics, memories and images from a quarter of a century of darting excellence, with the results and player details of every match and player over that time, along with a comprehensive reference source for lists and records, contained in its pages.

Since the first match between Dennis Priestley and Jocky Wilson in December 1993, over 1,300 matches involving more than 350 players have been played. Colourful quotes and photos add to the celebration in a book compiled using data from Sportradar, who have collected live dart-by-dart data from events around the globe as official data partner to the PDC.

Numbers are a large part of a tension-filled, fast-paced, mentally-draining sport. So whether you are a fan, player, media professional or just a darting geek, 25 Years of the PDC World Darts Championship is a must-have publication.

The author, Steve Morgan, has worked for Sportradar at PDC tournaments since 2015 with responsibility for ensuring data speed and accuracy to the PDC and betting industry.

The Remaking of French Rugby League

By Mike Rylance

A much-anticipated sequel to The Forbidden Game

The Catalan Dragons’ stunning 2018 Wembley Challenge Cup victory came against a backdrop of well over half a century of both triumph and turbulence in French rugby league.

Re-emerging from the iniquitous ban under the Vichy government, le rugby à treize was rebuilt from scratch after World War II – so successfully that the Tricolores were recognized as unofficial world champions after their dazzling, ground-breaking tour of Australia, and were at the forefront of international innovation, including the World Cup.

Together with the acclaimed The Forbidden Game, which explored the story of the Vichy ban, The Struggle and the Daring makes up the first-ever complete history of French rugby league.

Based on extensive research and interviews, Mike Rylance’s book highlights the many great players France has produced and analyses key events as the game emerged from the chaos of post-Liberation France, continued to grapple with the threat posed by rugby union and, after a long decline, returned to the mainstream of professional rugby league.

Compiled by Ewan Phillips

Q. Who scored a try while unconscious against Bradford in the 2011 Challenge Cup?

Q. Which Wigan star of the 1980s wore two earrings?

Q. Which Wigan forward did Gaby Roslin say she ‘quite fancied’ after his appearance on The Big Breakfast in 1992?

Think you’re an expert on Wigan RLFC? Let quizmaster Ewan Phillips – the man behind TV’s Mock the Week, Big Fat Quiz of the Year and more – test your knowledge of 2018’s Betfred Super League champions.

Prepare to be grilled on players and events legendary and random through every era from Northern Union to today. This captivating memory-jogger guarantees family fun.

Investigations from a Yorkshire Crime Writer’s Casebook

By Stephen Wade

There has always been a fascination with crime and punishment; from highwaymen to the foul deeds of Bradford lorry driver Peter Sutcliffe. The allure of the unsolved case has long provided material for true crime and fiction writers.

In Stephen Wade’s personal casebook, Murder in Mind, he gazes back over favourite investigations in his home county Yorkshire – rich with villainous acts, painstaking detective work and injustice.

Read about Leeds’s most notorious female killer Louie Calvert and why Wade believes her conviction and hanging a travesty. Learn of famous hangmen, Chartist rebels and cases open to fresh investigation, such as those of Bill o’ Jacks, Mr Blum and Emily Pye.

Murder in Mind brings together Stephen’s journeys into the criminal underworld, including his work as a writer in prisons and his research in the murder archives.

The basis for this book was created in the ‘Yorkshire Ripper’ years, when the impact of that series of murders sparked the crime writer in him. His tutor, Stanley Ellis, worked on the notoriously misleading ‘Ripper Tapes.’

Since then, Stephen has written over 70 non-fiction titles – many of them on the history of crime and the law – but this is something different. It is a mixture of memoir, reflection and the realisation that murder often happens down the street.