Jacett Publications Blog

A London Variety

Yesterday I completed a further proofreading project for Pen & Sword Books, this latest manuscript being a picture book about London Transport (LT) buses during the 1960s. The illustrations concerned came from the vast collection of prolific author Jim Blake, and covered all through what gradually became a somewhat fraught decade for LT. It would […]

A Visit to Cornwall

My latest completed proofreading project for Pen & Sword Books was a manuscript covering the history of the St Erth to St Ives railway line in Cornwall, not far from Penzance. Author Richard C. Long has written an informative and interesting account of the life and times of this 4.5 mile route, from the events […]

The Lutonians

My latest completed proofreading project, once again for Pen & Sword Books, took as its subject, Luton’s bus and tram transport from the 1900s to the present day. Author David Beddall has gathered together a remarkable picture collection of the many and varied vehicles that have been seen in the Bedfordshire town from Edwardian times. […]

A Difficult Time

Earlier today I completed a mammoth proofreading project for Pen & Sword Books, this one a look at the operation of the West Coast Main Line from 1957 to 1963. Author John Palmer has carried out much research on this complex project, which has three threads to the story. Firstly, the day-to-day workings of this […]

A modern piece of railway history

My latest completed proofreading project was a picture book on the subject of the various franchises operated by Virgin Trains (VT) , in its various guises, from the mid-1990s to 2019. Author Fred Kerr assembled a superb series of photographs, the majority of them from his own collection, which, together, gave an in-depth history of […]

A Political Proofread

My latest completed proofreading project for Pen & Sword Books has been one very different from my usual subjects. This was a biography about Ernest Marples, the Government’s Minister of Transport from 1959 to 1964 and the man who appointed Dr Richard Beeching to compile his ‘Reshaping of British Railways Report’ during the early 1960s. […]

Failure into Success

My latest completed proofreading project for Pen & Sword Books has been a mammoth manuscript, the subject being the time spent working in British industry by the Class 14 diesel-hydraulic Type 1 locomotives. I understand that this is the second book in this series (Locomotive Portfolios) about the 14s, and it charts the time these […]

A different sort of voyage

In a complete contrast to all the railway proofreading projects that I have been working on recently, I also did one on a shipping-type subject, ‘Maritime London’. This was a history of the ships and boats that have used (and are using) the River Thames from stone age times to the present. The author was […]

Southern Way 56

A proofreading assignment that is becoming a regular role for me is that carried out on the ‘Southern Way’ quarterly magazine. This publication is made up of articles about various aspects of the former Southern Railway, the pre-1923 railway companies, and the post-1948 system, both nationalised and privatised. I recently worked on edition 56 (‘SW56’), […]

Return to Wales (Part Two)

My second ‘excursion’ into Wales featured a proofread of a second John Hodge book, this time covering the railways encompassed under the title of ‘Milford Haven and Neyland Branches’. This new volume followed the same format as ‘Whitland to Pembroke Dock’, written historical information alongside a miscellany of old and new pictures. Much coverage was […]