• Hear the song 'Three Score and Ten' featured in I Read it in the Local Rag
• See our new analysis tools with the Runton 1851 census data
• Visit our expanding encyclopaedia of East Anglian towns
• How Do We Know About Castles? (from the 'Support and Resources' pages')
• Hear the Norfolk Dialect with Professor Peter Trudgill (from the 'Support and Resources' pages')
• Download a sample chapter of our title Henry Blogg of Cromer - The Greatest of the Lifeboatmen
• Do you know how many Americans were serving on HMS Victory at Trafalgar? (from the 'Support and Resources' pages)

Welcome to Poppyland Publishing - East Anglian Specialists

Whether you're living in Norfolk or Suffolk, Cambridgeshire or Essex, planning a visit, interested in local history, tracking down your family history or love the natural history of East Anglia, we hope we'll have some titles - books and DVDs - to interest you.

You can use your credit or debit card to make direct purchases from the site. In addition to Poppyland's own titles, we have the full range of titles in print from the prestigious Centre of East Anglian Studies. To use the 'Product Search' facility above, you only need to enter one word of interest - you don't, for instance, need to use the whole title of a book.

Try the buttons on the left for the different categories of titles we publish. And explore our 'Support and Resource' pages. These are all free - and always growing.

On the right you'll find short presentations about some of our products. To buy, click on the appropriate button in the left column.

Author Lucy Care first came into contact with the Paston family through the famous Paston Letters. Now, having settled in the village which bears the Paston name, she brings together history, walks and photographs to tell us of the rise and fall of the family between the 14th and the 17th centuries and where we can see evidence of thier heritage today.

Lucy and her father Jack Earl have always enjoyed walks and the exploration of the byways and footpaths of north Norfolk and further afield was a natural project to undertake. Churches and castles, moated manor houses and marble monuments are all here for further exploration and appreciation. To order your copy click Exploring Paston Country.

This nostalgic DVD features townsfolk from Wymondham and district reminiscing about the town in the second half of the 20th century. Growing up in the town before and after the war, schooldays, farming and horses, church and chapel, town and trade, are all featured on the disc.

To read more and to order, click Wymondham - Born and Bred. To take a glimpse at the disc in a short preview, click Personal Recollections from Wymondham.

Author Mark Nicholls is an award-winning journalist with the Eastern Daily Press. When writing about Nelson for the Trafalgar bicentennial commemoration in 2005, he was inspired to research the stories of many other Norfolkmen who became famous through their time at sea. He looks back to the fighting admirals of north Norfolk - Christopher Myngs, John Narborough and Cloudesley Shovell. He has tracked men who served with the great explorers, such as James Burney and Samuel Cresswell. And from more recent times his twenty-six subjects include legendary lifeboat coxswains Henry Blogg and William Fleming. Click Norfolk Maritime Heroes and Legends to find how to order your copy. You can click Mark Nicholls to hear the author introduce the book.

In the 1980s Theo Stibbons found a suitcase of letters sent from his great uncle to his grandfather in the years of the First World War. The letters give an account which still resonates today of a young volunteer signing up with enthusiasm and finding himself enveloped in a maelstrom. Yet he stills maintains his family standards, reporting the mundane, the exciting and the horrific.

This publication of a young Norfolk soldier's story, serving with the 10th Essex, adds another very personal strand to the many accounts available of that time. The letters are interwoven with the formal accounts of the period to give a moving story that goes from recruitment to Norwich, training at Colchester and a final wound in the desperation that was Delville Wood, three weeks into the desperate Battle of the Somme. To order, go to 'Wartime' Series; to hear from the compiler and editor of the letters, click Introduction to Dear Hal...Yours Pud.

A brand new edition of Roads and Tracks, much revised and enlarged from the original 1983 edition, telling the story of the roads and tracks of Norfolk from ancient times to the modern day. Whether you're a walker or a car driver, a horse rider or a cyclist, this book will add understanding and enjoyment to your exploration of the county. It includes a fold-out historical map inside the back cover.

With specially commissioned line drawings, a selection of photographs and associated support material on our web site, the book takes us another step forward in understanding and appreciating the county of Norfolk. Click to hear from author Bruce Robinson and on Roads and Tracks to order a copy.

Grandad's War - The First World War Diary of Horace Reginald Stanley is one young man's own story of his time with the Cambridgeshire Regiment; of disillusionment on being invalided out and then managing to return to the front with the Army Ordnance Corps.

Horace Stanley recorded his strong views about what was going on around him, his encounters with fear, regulations, friendship and the horror of the second battle of Ypres. He went to war with a sharp mind, a notebook and a camera, the result of which we can now read and see for the first time. Click on Grandad's War for more information and a chance to order this title.

International wildlife film-maker Mike Linley comes back home to present three wonderful DVDs about the region's wild life, with the generic names East Anglia - The Wild Side

Travel through the highways and byways of the region, the beaches and the waterways, and enjoy the wildlife in the company of a master filmmaker. Each disc takes a different environment; here we concentrate on the woods and fields of the counties on the disc Field and Woodland.

Click 'DVDs and Videos' for more information and our ordering pages. A click on Mike Linley and he'll tell you about some of the creatures featured in the series.

William Winstanley - The Man who saved Christmas is the remarkable story of an East Anglian who defied the puritanical regime of Oliver Cromwell and kept the spirit of Christmas alive. As a farmer, historian and thankfully as a writer, he recorded the wonderful Yuletide festivities at his Essex farm. Through this account of his life and writings about Christmas, we can see that he truly was the man who kept alive and restored the Christmas traditions we know today.

If you'd like us to get this title in the post to you as quickly as possible, or need some more information, click 'Miscellaneous titles'.

East Anglia, in the Norfolk and Suffolk Broads, has Europe's great expanse of lowland waterways. Artificially created during medieval times, the Broads and many rivers of the east of England - including of course Cambridgeshire and Essex - are populated by a fascinating mix of creatures. Join international wildlife film maker Mike Linley for an hour of exploration of the birds, amphibians and other animals of these wetland habitats.

Watch a bittern as it seeks to camouflage itself amonst the reeds, enjoy closeups of kingfishers, watch grass snakes eat their way out of their shells - and many more great video sequences.

To go straight to the order section for this DVD click 'DVDs and Videos'. For Mike Linley's introduction to the series, click on his name.

Coast and Estuary is the third title in the East Anglia - The Wild Side series. Join master film-maker Mike Linley to explore the creatures of East Anglia's hundreds of miles of coastline, from the cliffs of Hunstanton to the dunes of east Norfolk, the Sandlings of Suffolk and the estuaries of Essex.

Watch a mass take-off from the waters of the Wash, seals on the Point at Blakeney, a confrontation between and toad and a grass snake in the dunes, the great variety of seabirds that live along our coasts.

To order and for more information click 'DVDs and Videos'. For a video introduction to the series, click Mike Linley.

How did an East Anglian market town function as the 19th century became the 20th century? Who was trading with whom? How much did things costs? How long did you have to wait for bills to be paid? The Commercial Life of a Suffolk Town tackles these questions.

Author John Bridges delves deep into the history of his home town of Framlingham in and around the year of 1900 to give us some of the answers, unlocking the story of not just the one town but of life across East Anglia a century ago. To order and for more information go to the 'Miscellaneous Titles' section. Author John Bridges introduces the book to you with a click.

I Read it in the Local Rag is a new title from author Pip Wright. Over the last few years he has read hundreds of local newspapers - from the 1700s and 1800s! He has brought a collection of stories from those paper together in this new publication.

The predecessors to the East Anglian Daily Times and the Eastern Daily Press, the Bury Free Press and the Kings Lynn News right through to the Cromer and North Walsham Post and the Framlingham Weekly News - all appear in its pages.

More details and order from the 'East Anglian Memories' section. Click to hear author Pip Wright explain how he came to write this book; you can also hear him sing a song featured in the book by clicking Three Score and Ten

The DVD Exploring the Norfolk Village is now available. It is presented by Christopher Barringer, who also wrote the book Exploring the Norfolk Village, which you'll find on the Norfolk Origins page.

So why a book and a DVD? Each presents the story of the 14 selected Norfolk villages in its own way. The book has the space for the greatest detail, whilst the DVD takes you for a walk around and a flight over the villages and also includes a visit to the Record Office, to see some of the sources used in the author's research. Together the two make a perfect combination. And both contribute to understanding the specific history of the villages and to developing the skills of undertaking local history research. Order from the DVD and Video section. By clicking Christopher Barringer you can hear and see his introduction to the DVD.

Great Yarmouth - History, Herrings, Holidays on DVD or video Great Yarmouth is a harbour and town with a fascinating history. In medieval times it was the great base for trade across the North Sea to Europe - and was the largest herring fishing port in the world. Its tourist industry flourished from the early 19th century.

This video tells Yarmouth's story from Roman times through to the present day - with historic film, animated graphics and the comments of experts on the town's history. An added bonus is the singing of Sam Larner, a Yarmouth fisherman from 1892.

To order, go to the DVD and video section. Click for a trailer for the DVD.

Gressenhall Farm and Workhouse - A history of the buildings and the people who lived and worked there. This new title, launched at the Norfolk History Fair on 29th May 2006 at Gressenhall, tells the story of the 'house of industry' and the workhouse from its establishment in 1774 to the present day, when it is now the Museum of Norfolk Life.

Author Stephen Pope both works at Gressenhall as Visitor Services Assistant and devotes much time to investigating the archives of the museum, knowledge which has been condensed into this book. It will be a major resource for teacher, researchers, specialists and family historians, whether they have a specific interest in Gressenhall or a wider interest in workhouses and social conditions in the 19th and early 20th century.

The 'Support and Resources' section for this title carries lists of those who were inmates and otherwise associated with Gressenhall - you will find family names there, and the book will give you the context in which they were living.

This book can be order from the Miscellaneous section.