Looking at the books

We begin at that most nostalgic of venues: the railway station. York Railway Station to be precise, one of the most important on the network and the focus of Trains From York by John Edgington and John Spencer Gilks (Atlantic, £12.99).

This pictorial album follows the routes taken by passenger trains from the city station. We travel down the East Coast Main Line, to Leeds and Scarborough, and along lesser-known arteries such as the Harrogate branch, with its semaphore signals and crossing gates opened by hand.

There are colour photographs of modern high speed trains, but most of the pictures are of the great steam locomotives.

The book begins by contrasting the somewhat modest old station, opened in 1841 within the city walls, with the grander one we know today, dating from 1877.

Some special events are recalled, such as when Class V2 No 4818 was named St Peter's School, York, AD 627 in a lavish platform ceremony in April 1939. Ten years later, in July 1949, the royal train was stabled in the old station prior to returning Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh to London.

From old engines to the very first form of transport - Shanks' pony. Geoff 'Holgate' Hodgson, who has written a series of detailed histories of the York township, has now compiled a series of walks around the district.

There are ten routes in Mr Hodgson's Historical Walks Round Holgate. Each is accompanied by the author's informative commentary which ranges from Roman roads to last century's shopkeepers.

In this way you can cover thousands of years of history in a mile or two.

At the back are many black and white pictures of bygone times in Holgate and Acomb, as well as maps showing the route of each walk.

The book has been sponsored by Acomb Local History Group and through grants from the Westfield and Holgate ward committees of York council. This arrangement allows you to snap up a copy at the bargain price of £1 in Acomb and Holgate and £1.50 elsewhere.

Our next book, Chasing Percy, takes us back to the First World War, and one soldier in particular: Percy Topliss. He is better known as the Monocled Mutineer, after a BBC television serial about him.

Former Joseph Rowntree pupil Jaynie Bilton became interested in Topliss's life after discovering that her great grandfather's sister, Emma Walters, married Percy's granddad Herbert.

She discovered there was more myth than fact in many accounts of Percy Topliss's life. He was born in Nottingham in 1873. By the age of 11, he was up before the magistrates charged with stealing three dozen evening newspapers. This was the start of a short life of rebellion and crime.

He is remembered as the alleged ringleader of a mutiny at a training camp at Etaples, France. So harsh was the discipline that it was known as the Bullring by soldiers.

Then, the story goes, he went on the run disguising himself as an officer, sometimes a general, and leading the police a dance around Britain until he was cornered and shot dead in Penrith, Cumbria.

But in her extensive research, Jaynie cannot find any evidence that Topliss was present at the Bullring mutiny. He spent most of his war at Gallipoli.

The author draws on court records, archives and interviews with Topliss's relatives to produce the truth behind the sensational headlines of the time. She was Chasing Percy for two years; in the book, she has captured him.

Jaynie still has family in York. Her mum is being cared for at St Leonard's Hospice, and she is donating £1 for every book sold to Evening Press readers to the hospice.

The book costs £9.99 plus £1.50 p&p and is available from Jaynie at 9 Shrewsbury Close, Oakwood, Derby DE21 2RW. Please make cheques payable to J Bilton.

From Percy the sinner to Margaret the saint. Margaret Clitherow: Saint Of York (Highgate, £7.50) is a new assessment of the life of a woman whose martyrdom still has the power to shock four centuries on.

The author, John Rayne-Davis, who lives at Copmanthorpe, York, converted to Catholicism in 1995. He is a member of St Wilfrid's Church in York, and all his proceeds from the book go to its refurbishment fund.

This is a very readable account of Margaret's short life, set out in short chapters which take the reader towards a much greater understanding of why she forfeited her life in the name of her faith. It is a well-researched work, although some references to the sources consulted would have been welcome.

Mr Rayne-Davis is careful to bring home the starkly different society of 16th century England. At the same time the book does not avoid parallels with modern existence: "If we believe that religious prejudice is a thing of the past, we have only to remember the thousands murdered in the World Trade Centre on 11 September 2001, and the carnage in the Holy Land," it says on the back cover.

The author also portrays Margaret's husband John not as the militant Protestant of some portrayals, but very supportive of his wife. Mr Rayne-Davis believed one reason why she refused to have her case go to full trial was because it would have implicated her husband.

As for Margaret herself, she emerges as an immensely strong woman, a natural leader, quick-witted with a temper.

It was when she arranged for her son Henry, then 12, to go to Rheims to be educated as a Catholic priest that her persecutors saw a chance to be rid of this "hated papist".

Her bravery at the hearing in the Guildhall, York, is astonishing. The indictment was put to her that she had harboured "Jesuits and priests, enemies of Her Majesty".

She replied: "If you say I have offended then I must be tried. I will be tried by none but God, and your consciences."

Margaret's refusal to be tried led to her being sentenced to the most cruel death, crushed to death under a door loaded with weights on Ouse Bridge.

This brought to an end the 33-year-old life of a woman who, the author says, "had a humanity and vitality as well as supreme courage which reaches out to people living under totally different social and political conditions four hundred years later".

Updated: 11:34 Monday, January 13, 2003