To Edify and Delight: Introducing the Sermons of Gilbert White of Selborne (2011), 224 pages – by Louis Coulson, with a Preface by Paul Foster, and drawings by Marion Eastgate

Lovers of White’s Natural History of Selborne (1789) have often been bemused by White’s ‘other life’ - as a clergyman; in fact, the puzzlement has been such that little attention has ever been given to this aspect of his career. Now, for the very first time, all his extant sermons (thirty-eight in all) have been tracked down and carefully studied by Louis Coulson, himself a clergyman and lover of the natural world. The outcome of Coulson’s work is the present volume, which gives a chronological account of White’s ‘religious’ life, with large extracts from the sermons.

192 pages – by Christopher Dwyer, with a preface by Baroness Julia Neuberger, edited by Paul Foster

Prepared by Christopher Dwyer, former solicitor and barrister, and the first British (legal) civil servant at the EEC HQ in the early 1970s, the volume offers an extremely careful conspectus of current law in relation to: Freedom of Religion; Religion and Employment; Access to Goods and Services; Marriage, Divorce, and Civil Partnership;
Children and the Family; Religion and Education.

By Paul Foster, Sheila Hale and David Pratt

This volume is a collection of richly-illustrated essays devoted to different trades and retailers who have disappeared from Chichester in the past thirty to forty years. It comprises twelve chapters by different authors (many of whom are birth-Cicestrians), beginning with a chapter on ‘Bread and Confectionary’ and ending with one on ‘Pills and Potions’. The topic of each chapter is introduced by an original drawing in colour by David Pratt.

A volume of over 200 pages, with a dozen or more illustrations in colour (signifying Hayley’s patronage of painters), the aim of the publication is to promote attention to the work of Hayley. Containing essays by eleven scholars, the book demonstrates the continued relevance of Hayley’s kind of poetry – which was lauded in his time, his most successful poem, The Triumphs of Temper, achieving sixteen British editions between 1781 and 1817 which is far more, in the period, than any work by his ‘Romantic’ successors

Misericords in Sussex is a volume of 92 pages offering a survey of all known, historic misericords in churches in the counties of both East and West Sussex, most of them falling within the diocese of Chichester. Prepared by Jean Barnes, with photographs by Tony Barnes and by Joy Whiting, the volume is edited by Paul Foster, and contains 167 illustrations.

This volume, Number 34 in the series of Otter Memorial Papers, extends to 112 pages and includes 40 illustrations in full colour and 13 in black/white. Prepared by Ken Green, local historian and founder of the Chichester Local History Society, and edited by Paul Foster, the volume contains a Preface by the Dean of Chichester, The Very Revd Nicholas Frayling, and an Epilogue by the present Custos, the Revd. John Harrington.

DOORS OF OPPORTUNITY is a study by historian, Barbara J. Smith, of the remarkable foundation in post-war Britain of one of the nation's teacher training colleges, which is now part of a modern university. It is the account of planning in 1942, in the grimmest time of war, for a solution to the foreseen serious shortage of teachers after hostilities. The government planners created a scheme of Emergency Teacher Training Colleges, which would recruit demobilised servicemen and servicewomen for specially designed courses of further education and training in schools. In a period of severe post-war austerity, encouraged by a doughty Principal working with a responsive local authority and a specially recruited lecturing staff, these ex-servicemen and women not only eased the teacher supply problem, but enlivened the local town and countryside with their enthusiastic presence and a wealth of practical activities. They have left a legacy for today's university students, who live and learn in their college premises.