Bridget Gubbins.

21 July 2021 Bridget’s new book Hay Before the Bookshops or The Beeman’s Family is a child’s eye view of life in the 1950s. Hay-on-Wye was a little town not so very different from Morpeth in the post war days. Now town runs a world-famous for annual book festival. Perhaps Morpeth will follow suit. Before that, over the period of a decade, Bridget wrote one local history book after another about Morpeth: of the yards and alleyways, the drovers, the workhouse and the Norman de Merlay family who controlled Morpeth for two hundred years. Many of the stories took the reader with her as she travelled in the footsteps of our predecessors, over the hills with the drovers, with the monks of Newminster as they took their flocks to the Cheviots, and with the young girls who over four generations were sent to marry the de Merlay barons. She was always on the go. As a young woman in the 1960s, she travelled alone, on foot, hitchhiking behind the Iron Curtain. This is the subject of her forthcoming book. In the past, she was active in the campaign against nuclear power stations at Druridge Bay in Northumberland, has been press director for a renewable energy company.

Barbara Fox was born in Newcastle and spent her childhood there and in the mining town of Ashington, Northumberland. She was inspired to write her first book, 'Bedpans & Bobby Socks', after reading the letters her mother, Gwenda Gofton, wrote home while working as a young nurse in 1950s America. A short podcast, 'Off the Page: Wandering Girls', features Gwenda and her companion Pat talking about those days and can be heard on iTunes or Libsyn. Barbara worked with shepherdess Emma Gray on 'One Girl and Her Dogs', an account of Emma's first year running a farm in an isolated part of Northumberland, before starting 'Is the Vicar in, Pet?', her own childhood memoir. 'When the War Is Over' turns back the clock to Gwenda's childhood during the Second World War and her evacuation to a Lake District schoolhouse, after which Barbara edited 'Eve's War', the wartime diaries of Evelyn Shillington, who accompanied her officer husband to postings all over the UK. Her most recent book is 'Midwife of Borneo' - the extraordinary tale of how Wendy left her comfortable life to run a clinic in the remote interior of this vast island in south-east Asia.

Miles W. Hewitt was born and currently lives in Northumberland. He admits to having the wanderlust in him at a very young age, hitchhiking hundreds of miles as a nine-year-old before leaving the parental home on his fifteenth birthday. At the age of twenty, he travelled overland through Asia to Australia and has been on the road ever since during which time he has lived in Mexico, China, USA and Europe. Miles & Miles- A Lifetime of Travel in Asia and Latin America is his debut memoir published in 2018 and the sequel, Miles & Miles - Travels Through a Fragrant Europe, in 2021. Miles now spends the majority of his time on creative projects which revolve around the written word and is currently working on a blockbuster novel and travel thriller, String of Consciousness.

Scott Weightman

Born in Wallsend on Tyne Scott Weightman was educated at Leeds and Bristol Universites.

Sales of his ten guidebooks on the islands and heritage of North Northumberland have topped 750,000. His latest book , “Mirror on a Lamp Post” outlines some of his International travel experiences between 1961 and 2021. He has visited over 80 countries on five continents. As a student he studied in Moscow ( 1965) , journeyed on the “Trans Siberian” for six days (1986) and has visited Russia as recently as 2019. As a teacher Scott organised regular student exchanges with Czechoslovakia ( now Czechia) , USA ( Minnesota) , Russia and Norway . School trips included Peru , Greece and a European soccer tour for his Under 13 team. Since retiring Scott has taught in Czechia, Poland and Sri Lanka. He was the founder of the Berwick Youth Project ( 1995), Spittal Improvement Trust(1997) and more recently he has set up a small charity ( Every Penny) to help the Sri Lankan community of Weligima , devastated by the 2004 tsunami and the 2020 -2022 Covid pandemic.Since 1960 Scott has been a church organist .