WarmPorch Publishing is a very small, independent, labour of love.

In one form or another, I have been involved in publishing for almost twenty-five years, from setting up an independent music magazine (Sandman Magazine) in Sheffield to my current work at Oxford University Press.

WarmPorch was initially created to publish some extracts from my grandmother’s journals, The Search for Freeland Gardens [2009]. This small book (also now our first ebook) covered the arrival of my family, 50 years previously, to open a nursery garden in a small West Oxfordshire village.

In recent years I have been working with the sculptor Steve Hurst, using his diaries and sketchbooks to tell the story of the young artist. In 2022, Drawn From Life: The Ruskin Diaries 1949-53, was the first full length WarmPorch book and this year we published the follow-up, Bluff Road: The Malaya Diaries 1953-1955, covering Steve’s experiences as a national serviceman during the Malayan Emergency.

Looking further ahead, my grandmother wrote her journals between 1931 and 1974, and they track the author’s life from a shy teenager about to embark on her nursing training during the early years of the Depression, to the older, hardy, market gardener contemplating retirement. Ideally I’d like to publish three volumes of these journals. The entire text has been transcribed (about 1.3 million words); the next task is to edit them down.

Watch this space.

Peter Tickler is an established writer of crime fiction, mostly set in and around Oxford. He has been much praised for the authenticity of his Oxford (‘a wonderful gift of creating geographically factual settings for his fictional characters’ – Oxford Times) as well as the pace of his stories (‘deliciously thrilling and wildly unpredictable’ – Oxford Today).

He studied classics at Keble College, and later settled with his wife and family in South Oxford. He worked in the IT dept of the Potato Marking Board in Between Towns Road, and from the computer room he looked down into the carpark of the Cowley police station. So it was inevitable that his irascible protagonist DI Susan Holden was based there. He loves setting his crimes in places he knows, and describes himself as ‘town, not gown’.

His latest (and 10th) crime story is Death in the Sea Pool, set in Bude where he has spent many off-season holidays. He insists that ‘sometimes I need a change of scene!’.

He is a member of the Crime Writers’ Association, and gives talks at festivals, libraries, U3As, Women’s Institutes and even at one of His Majesty’s Prisons. (They let him out eventually!).

His great-grandfather founded Tickler’s Jam Company, which supplied jam to the British troops and became a household name in the First World War. This was the inspiration for his novel The Tickler’s Jam Murders.

Peter Lovesey (winner of 3 CWA daggers) emailed him: “I was bamboozled by the solution to the puzzle. Bravo.”

In Teachers, Schools and Views on Education, John Howson brings together a year of sharp, timely reflections on the English education system at a moment of rapid change. Written as events unfolded, these commentaries capture the pressures facing teachers, the shifting demands on schools, and the policy decisions that shaped the national conversation throughout 2013.

With his trademark clarity and deep understanding of the teacher labour market, Howson offers readers a grounded, insightful narrative that connects policy to practice and national debate to classroom reality. From recruitment challenges to governance reforms, from curriculum shifts to workforce morale, this book provides a rare contemporaneous record of a pivotal year.

Essential reading for educators, policymakers, researchers, and anyone seeking to understand how the forces of policy and practice interact, this volume stands as both a historical document and a lens through which to view today’s ongoing debates.

The Little Review is the pocket magazine for anyone interested in poetry.

Printed three times a year in bright yellow covers, each mischievous little issue includes a mix of poem and stories, impertinent interviews, irreverent essays and bracingly honest book reviews.

Our writers include Colm Tóibín, Patricia Lockwood, Luke Kennard, Lucy Ellmann, Anthony Vahni Capildeo and Karen Solie. Founded in 2025, The Little Review is sold in more UK bookshops than any other magazine dedicated to poetry.

Oxford eBooks (est 2010) specialises in Digital Publishing services for authors and publishers alike. Their typesetting, publishing and eBook production services are fast, accurate and well priced. They also now produce beautifully recorded and edited Audio Books. Come talk with Andy about your project and how he can make your book a reality.

Angela has written extensively for the Oxford University Press Reading Tree Programme (mostly for the award-winning Readerful series). She has recently written two Stories for Maths titles. Scareground, her middle-grade novel was published in 2023 and nominated for the Historical Association’s Young Quills Award (Best Historical Fiction for Children). Angela teaches creative writing worldwide to children and adults, and will reopen her booking list in September. Hobbledown, the award-winning adventure park, is based on her children’s book of the same title.