Finding Your Scottish Ancestors

Kirsty F Wilkinson • £16.99
crowood.com

The availability of many records online means that those fortunate enough to have Scottish ancestors can easily access many of the sources they need to build their family tree. However, as research progresses, most family historians will eventually hit the dreaded ‘brick wall’ and find themselves unable to proceed further. Finding Your Scottish Ancestors provides a wealth of information, advice and techniques to help solve these genealogy problems and gives family historians the tools they need to track down even the most elusive forebears. Contents include: sources for Scottish family history research, both traditional archives and online resources; techniques for searching and interpreting genealogical records; planning and recording research; common genealogy problems and their solutions.

Reading Early Handwriting 1500–1700

Mark Forrest • £10
balh.org.uk

This 88-page practical guide from the British Association for Local History covers handwriting from 1500 to 1700, illustrated with facsimiles and transcripts of more than 20 documents of types most frequently encountered by researchers. An indispensable resource for local and family historians, it also explains how numbers, currency and measurements were expressed and offers advice on transcribing.

Thomas Cromwell: A Historical Sourcebook

Heritage Hunter • £7.99
amazon.co.uk

Interest in the 16th century British statesman Thomas Cromwell, righthand man to Henry VIII until he lost favour with the king, has never been greater than in the last decade, fuelled by award-winning novels and biographies. But until now there has not been a single sourcebook bringing together most of the contemporary or near-contemporary accounts of Thomas Cromwell’s life and deeds which those writers have drawn upon.

This book redresses the balance with an edited collection of letters, chronicles and memoirs from people who knew Cromwell directly - including Cromwell himself – as well as those who wrote about him in his era. Writers here include Reginald Pole, John Foxe, Raphael Holinshed, George Cavendish and John Stow, as well as numerous others.

This book is a useful tool for all students of 16th century British history, as well as anyone captivated by the life of this enigmatic figure. It makes the perfect companion to Hilary Mantel’s trilogy of Wolf Hall, Bring up the Bodies and The Mirror and the Light, and the biographies of Thomas Cromwell by Diarmaid MacCulloch and Tracy Borman.

My Ancestors Worked in Textile Mills

Adele Emm • £9.99
sog.org.uk

For anyone researching their textile worker ancestors, this book is useful guide as well as a compelling work of social history. It is divided into two parts. The first examines the cotton, wool, linen and silk industries; the development of the textile industry in the UK; and the living conditions of textile mill workers throughout history. The second recommends genealogical resources to readers searching for guidance on where to research their own textile mill worker ancestors.

Many people from the south of England headed north in search of work in the textile industry, which was prominent not just in Yorkshire and Lancashire, but also Cheshire and Scotland, particularly Lanarkshire. Although the subject is vast, the author of the book, Adele Emm, writes clearly and with unwavering enthusiasm about everything from types of jobs, types of mills, living conditions, mill finance, canals, technical progress, apprentices, health, sanitation and working conditions.

The Mother of the Brontës

Sharon Wright • £12.99
pen-and-sword.co.uk

This first biography of Maria Branwell reveals a remarkable woman who has spent 200 years in the shadow of her extraordinary children, Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë. Before she gave life to the most famous literary brood of all time Maria was an independent lady of Regency Penzance during the Napoleonic wars, born into an influential family rocked by tragedy and scandal.