Next Chapter Books Sheffield

'A chilling and fast-paced political thriller set in a near-future Britain, UK 2.0 explores power, control, and the price of change.'

'After years of growing political discontent, a breakaway group of MPs abandoned the old parties and created something new…Their boldest experiments were first tested in Sheffield and the north of England, which became a laboratory for the regime. But as their grip on power tightens, a devastating question emerges: who is actually in control?'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxH052cVhQk

Faber & Faber commissioned British printmakers to design and illustrate the covers and endpapers of their Romantic Poetry Collection. Note the tiger's eye in the end-paper of the Blake collection.

A fine Drainspotting outing earlier today! Thanks to all who came along. The next three Saturdays will be up at Lodge Moor - already a few bookings for next Saturday, and it's looking like a nice group then too. Otherwise I'm doing the city centre tour every Sunday this summer :)

Full details of upcoming tours in the pinned posts.

Next Chapter Books Sheffield

A train ticket bookmark found in The Road to Wigan Pier for the 15.25 service from Sheffield to London St Pancras, a journey which took place on this day twenty-six years ago - 03 JUL 00.

“Put a pacifist in a bomb-factory and in two months he will be devising a new type of bomb…Verbally, no doubt, we would agree that machinery is made for man and not man for machinery; in practice any attempt to check the development of the machine appears to us as an attack on knowledge and therefore a kind of blasphemy. And even if the whole of humanity suddenly revolted against the machine and decided to escape to a simpler way of life, the escape would still be immensely difficult.”

A 'Drainspotting' outing this Saturday morning at 11am! Full details in the event post. All tours are priced at £10 per adult with accompanied children free. No booking required :)

Next Chapter Books Sheffield
Welcome to Sheffield
Our Favourite Places

Sharrow Festival back at Mount Pleasant Park tomorrow (Saturday) 12-8pm

From The diaries of Franz Kafka:
1st July 1914 'Too tired'

"Franz Kafka is the great enigma of early twentieth-century literature [and his diaries] reveal to us the extraordinary inner world in which he lived. Here he describes…his fear, isolation, and frustration, his feelings of guilt and his sense of being an outcast."

Kafka's diaries were published by his friend and biographer Max Brod who did much to publicise Kafka's work after his death.

“This fairy form alone impress’d
Its perfect image in my breast”

A couplet from Sheffield poet James Montgomery's 'The Little Cloud' which he saw on 'a country excursion among the woods and rocks of Wharncliffe…on the 30th day of June, 1818.'

Montgomery (1771 – 1854) was a Scottish-born hymn writer, poet and newspaper editor, who settled in Sheffield. Imprisoned twice for sedition, Montgomery lived at The Mount in Broomhill and is buried at the General Cemetary.

This volume of his work dates from 1860.

‘The past is always changing. By the end of the century, 1940 had changed, and it is changing still. It is only just becoming clear that the British have misunderstood themselves…If the events of 1940 were important for Britain, they were even more so for continental Europe.'

RIP Stephen Bungay: 2nd September 1954 - 16th May 2026

Perspectives on Stonehenge from the 1950s and 1970s:
"The Heel Stone is the subject of one of the most popular misconceptions concerning Stonehenge, namely that it marks the point of sunrise on Midsummer Day..."
"In this book, Fred Hoyle places the argument [that Stonehenge was an astronomical calculator] on a firm scientific footing."