"Cotters and Squatters", by Colin Ward

[office at tlio.demon.co.uk]

Available now from Five Leaves, PO Box 81, Nottingham NG5 4ER. Mail order
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Cotters and Squatters
Housing's Hidden History
by Colin Ward
176 pages, illustrated, 0 907123 19 8, 9.99

There is a widespread folk belief that if a house could be erected between
sundown and sunrise, the occupants had a right to live there. Often enquiry
shows this legend to be true: that's the way it happened. Colin Ward's book
is full of anecdote and glimpses of surviving evidence of this and other
unofficial ways in which people have housed themselves.
  Cotters and Squatters explores the story of squatter settlements in
England and Wales: from our cave-dwelling recent ancestors to the Diggers
and on to the industrial revolution; and from twentieth-century mass
squatting to modern claims that "The Land is Ours".
  Colin Ward is the chronicler of popular and unofficial uses of the
landscape. His many books cover New Towns, holiday camps, tenant control of
housing, the plotlands and many examples of "anarchy in action".

Colin Ward is nearly always worth listening to... he casts a sceptical and
knowing eye over many of the architectural conceits of our age. The Guardian

He is the ideal interpreter of the dissidents The Architects' Journal


The Allotment: Its
Landscape and Culture
David Crouch & Colin Ward
313 pages, 0 907123 91 0, 12.99

This unique and fascinating book explores the part allotments have played in
British life for the last 150 years. Rich is local history and anecdote, the
authors also explore the struggles to retain hold of land against the
developers. They map the changing nature of the modern plot-holder,
alternative uses and international comparisons.

Learned and literary, Crouch and Ward are like Orwellian socialists in their
defence of small, important rights.
The Guardian

Journey Up the Thames:
William Morris and Modern England
John Payne
224 pages, 0 907123 68 6, 7.99

John Payne follows the course of the Thames to its source, the same journey
taken by William Morris in News from Nowhere. He explores the towns and
villages, setting his comments against Morris's views about democracy,
craft, technology and the countryside. He discusses Walthamstow; Merton;
Putney; Hammersmith; Hampton Court; Runnymede; Windsor; Eton; Slough;
Cookham; Reading; Abingdon; Oxford and Kelmscott.

...he teases out a whole series of today's social issues... Town and Country
Planning

The obvious enjoyment (Payne) had in writing this delightful book is yours
to be shared when you read it. Freedom