The Records of Early English Drama (REED) series aims to establish the context for the great drama of Britain's past by examining material related to drama, secular music, and other communal entertainment and ceremony from the Middle Ages until the mid-seventeenth century. This latest volume in the series is a collection of documentary evidence for dramatic performance, minstrelsy, and civic ceremony in Cheshire to 1642. Editors Elizabeth Baldwin and David Mills have provided introductions detailing the historical background and significance of the documents presented, as well as a full apparatus of document descriptions, explanatory and textual notes and glossaries. Cheshire completes the series of REED volumes on the West of England, and incorporates an updated version of the early Chester volume, as well as providing extensive new material on the county of Cheshire as a whole, making it an essential addition to this much-admired series.

The extraordinary story of the two early collieries at Neston, in west Cheshire, has been largely overlooked by historians. Yet, for a time the main coal mine, Ness Colliery, was more successful than most of its contemporaries in nearby south-west Lancashire and North Wales. It was the first large industrial site in west Cheshire and introduced the area’s earliest steam engine.

'I devoured A Manual for Heartache in one sitting . . . a kind, honest and wise book about how to make a friend of sadness.' - Rachel Joyce, author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. When Cathy Rentzenbrink was still a teenager, her happy family was torn apart by an unthinkable tragedy. In A Manual for Heartache she describes how she learnt to live with grief and loss and find joy in the world again. She explores how to cope with life at its most difficult and overwhelming and how we can emerge from suffering forever changed, but filled with hope. This is a moving, warm and uplifting book that offers solidarity and comfort to anyone going through a painful time, whatever it might be. It's a book that will help to soothe an aching heart and assure its readers that they're not alone.