Back in the 50s, before becoming the best-selling author of the twentieth century, a lady called Enid Blyton used to play golf with her publisher, G. Martyn Lewis, head of the Lutterworth Press.
We published quite a number of Enid Blyton’s early works including: Buttercup Farm Family (1951), Snowball the Pony (1953) and Adventure of a Secret Necklace (1956), and so were delighted to hear today about the forthcoming Enid Blyton exhibition at the Seven Stories centre in Newcastle.
Original copies of the books she published with us are now hard to find, but we do have a number of other celebrities in our back catalogue, whose work you can still buy.
Sir Patrick Moore (4 March 1923 – 9 December 2012), was a well-known face and voice for anyone with an interest in Space and Astronomy. We published a whopping 12 of his books of which his original 1977 Guide to Comets is still available on our website – click here for more info!
Although not writing the whole book themselves, we’ve also had a number of prestigious Foreword writers. Most recently, former Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams graced our pages on behalf of Douglas Dales in his latest work, Alcuin: Theology and Thought:
‘We have not had an up-to-date overview of the copious research of recent decades on Alcuin and on the controversies of his day, or a guide to the way in which his theological writing helped to create a shared doctrinal idiom in Western Europe. In these pages, written in tandem with a full biographical study, Douglas Dales, who has already published distinguished studies of the Anglo-Saxon Church, offers just such a survey and guide, presenting Alcuin’s thought with the greatest possible insight, sympathy and lucidity.’
Somewhat more surprising is the foreword by Joanna Lumley (OBE) to Christopher Portway’s Pedal for Your Life, a remarkable true story that weaves together the author’s recollections of capture and escape in Nazi-occupied Europe with an account of a cycle journey undertaken with his son through the same countries fifty years later.
We’ve also had our fair share of famous reviews including the ever controversial, Christopher Hitchens (13 April 1949 – 15 December 2011) who said of Michael Palmer’s The Atheist’s Primer: ‘This fine anthology of the long struggle for reason against faith will certainly help those who seek emancipation from religious tyranny’. And more recently, another ardent atheist, Dr Michael Martin, who said of Palmer’s The Atheist’s Primer: “Hurray for Michael Palmer! The Atheist’s Primer is one of the best introductions to Atheism available. Well written and the many pictures of famous philosophers add to its charm – the only introduction to Atheism that I know of that has this!”
Some of you who read this blog regularly, will be wondering why Sir David Attenborough is not on this list after all the fuss I made about his Zoo Quest Expeditions last year. Well, thanks to his ongoing TV popularity we have now SOLD OUT of that title which was the last we had stock of in the Zoo Quest series. However, everyone’s favourite broadcaster and naturalist may be making a return to our list in the future…
Watch this space.
lutterworthpress.wordpress.com 
How could I forget?! Perhaps our most famous contributor, H.R.H. Prince Philip himself wrote the forward to Johannes Erritzoe’s ‘Birds of CITES: And How to Identify Them’!
Find out more here: tinyurl.com/myuwqpo