Books on art, gardening, food, surfing and more...

Alison Hodge are publishers of high-quality, award-winning, illustrated books by leading authors. We specialize in the areas of art and photography, gardening, garden history, horticulture, natural history, food and surfing.

This site contains full details of all our books – in print and forthcoming – and information about their authors. You can use Google Book Search to look inside lots of the books … just follow the link from the catalogue entry. If you would like to make a purchase, it couldn’t be simpler … put the book in your shopping basket, and go to Google Checkout.

We enjoy producing our books, and we hope you enjoy them too.

WHAT'S NEW?
Just published and available from this site are Sam Bleakley's Surfing Brilliant Corners, which details a decade of extreme surf travel; David Chapman's A Cornish Year, which chronicles a year in the life of this award-winning wildlife writer and photographer, and Mike Thomas's Strange Things Happened on My Way to the Zoo, an entertaining account of how the author came to be an owner of the Seal Sanctuary, and then bought the ailing Newquay Zoo.

We are adding more titles to our popular Pocket Cornwall series. Steve Jones' Insects of Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, Simon Camm's Cornish Rocks and Minerals, and Bernard Deacon's Cornwall and the Cornish are now available.

Explore Cornwall with Pocket Cornwall… they’re great little books, and great value for money!


EVENTS
Mike Thomas, author of Strange Things Happened on My Way to the Zoo will sign copies of his book at Waterstones in Truro on Thursday 12 August, starting at 11.15 a.m. He will be at the Roseland Festival on 30 October, and will give a talk to the Friends of the Eden Project on 18 November.

Sam Bleakley will sign copis of his book Surfing Brilliant Corners at Waterstones in Truro on Saturday 14 August, starting at 11 a.m.

You can see superb wildlife photographs by our authors David Chapman and Steve Jones at Wildlife on the Edge, an exhibition at the Hard Rock Gallery at Geevor Tin Mine until September 2010.

Tony Butt, author of Surf Science and The Surfer's Guide to Waves, Coasts and Climates, is running a short course on oceanography and meteorology for surfers and other water users at Cornwall College Tolcarne, Tolcarne Beach, Newquay, Cornwall on 4 and 5 September. Full details here.


NEWS
David Chapman's photograph of a great spotted woodpecker drumming is a finalist in the 2010 International Garden Photographer of the Year competition.


FIRM FAVOURITES
Just a click away are wildlife artist Dick Twinney's From Hedgerow to High Tor; Tony Butt's The Surfer's Guide to Waves, Coasts and Climates, and Sarah Chapman's Iconic Cornwall.

For walkers, we have Cornwall from the Coast Path, Exploring the Cornish Coast and Exploring the Camel Estuary.

For stunning photographs of Cornwall, try John Such's Cornwall from Above, David Chapman's Penwith Moods, or Mark Webster's Beneath Cornish Seas.


AWARDS
We were thrilled to be shortlisted for the prestigious British Book Design and Production Awards 2008 in the Brand/Series identity category, for our new Pocket Cornwall series. The series was commended in the 2009 Holyer and Gof awards for the best Cornish books published in 2008.

David Chapman’s books Wild about Cornwall and Penwith Moods both received Commendations in the 2008 Holyer an Gof Awards for the best Cornish publications of 2007.

We received the Waterstone's Special Award 2007 – the first of its kind – for John Such's book Cornwall from Above at the 2007 Holyer an Gof Awards. This book has been reprinted twice already!

Andrew Tompsett's book Golden Harvest: The story of daffodil growing in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly won First Place in its class in the 2007 Holyer an Gof Awards for the best Cornish publications of 2006. John Such's book Cornwall from Above received a Commendation in its class.


Cornish Fishing and Seafood, by Carol Trewin and Adam Woolfitt, won the Gourmand English-UK Awards 2006, in the category Best Local Cookery Book. Previous winners include Rick Stein and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. The Gourmand World Cookbook Awards are regarded as the Oscars of food and drink books, and regularly attract some 6,000 entries from 65 countries. Winners are selected for the author ‘whose personality and heart shines throughout the book’; for their high quality of production and printing, and as a user-friendly book that ‘respects and understands’ the reader.

Philip McMillan Browse's book Heligan: Fruit, Flowers and Herbs won First Place in its class in the 2006 Holyer an Gof Awards for the best Cornish publications of 2005.

Gourmet Cornwall, by Carol Trewin and Adam Woolfitt, won the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards 2005, for the Best Local Cookbook published in English in the UK. It was also shortlisted by the Guild of Food Writers for their Michael Smith Award for Work on British Food 2006.

Charles Fox's book, Glendurgan: A Personal Memoir of a Garden in Cornwall, was awarded First Place in its class in the 2005 Holyer an Gof Awards for the best Cornish publications of 2004. Suzanne Treseder's A Passion for Plants: The Treseders of Truro received a Commendation in the same class.