There have been many books that have contributed to both the information found on this website, our general interest in what we have seen, they have also given us many leads and creaking bookcases. This section will detail all the books that have provided us with the most of the information and history on the website.
There have been many books that have helped us out, so we have broken them down into a number of different sections (do click on the list to jump to the relevant section).
Photography Books
Photography has become our primary hobby in recent years and has led to us reading a fair amount about it. Here is a list off all the books that have helped us out.
Understanding Exposure, 3rd Edition: How to Shoot Great Photographs with Any Camera
More than 100 vivid, graphic comparison pictures illustrate every point in this classic and can help any photographer maximize the creative impact of his or her exposure decisions. Peterson stresses the importance of metering the subject for a starting exposure and then explains how to use various exposure meters and different kinds of lighting. This book helped us to gain a thorough understanding of what our cameras were trying to do!
Bryan Peterson
ISBN: 978-0817463007
The Photographer’s Eye: Composition and Design for Better Digital Photos
This books leads the reader through a myriad of different design and compositional aspects when they are taking photographs. It contains detailed explanations of different theories, example pictures and then illustrations showing how the eye is led through the picture. This book totally changed the way TheTimeChamber thought about their photographs.
Michael Freeman
ISBN: 978-1905814046
The Hot Shoe Diaries: Big Light from Small Flashes
This book is a must for anyone wanting to take pictures using multiple flash guns. This book TheTimeChamber occasionally dip into for lighting tips, although flash photography is quite new to us!
Joe McNally
ISBN: 9780321580146
Victorian Asylums
Asylum: Inside The Closed World of State Mental Hospitals
A superb, large format coffee table book with lots of stunning images detailing the large, almost city like, American Asylums. Some stunning photography that influences TheTimeChamber in many ways
Christopher Payne
ISBN: 978-0-262-01349-9
A History of St. Nicholas Hospital, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England 1869-2001
Encapsulating the origins and history of Newcastles lunatic asylum in its entirety, from first opening in 1869 until what may be regarded as its eventual demise in 2001. This book contains a detailed narrative of the hospitals history.
Logan Ewing
ISBN: 9781438937540
Asylum, Hospital, Haven – A History of Horton Hospital
Published a year before the hospital was due to close, Ruth Valentine has given a brief, yet meticulous history and insight into the Horton Hospital in Epsom. It includes archive photos, various patient and staff stories and a short background into why the Horton Estate was chosen for the development of a cluster of Asylums.
Ruth Valentine
ISBN: 0952830604
Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates
One of the key texts that look at institutionalisation within the Asylums and was key to the rethinking of Mental Health Treatment.
Erving Goffman.
ISBN: 0140210075
ISBN13: 978-0140210071
Asylum History: Buckingham County Pauper Lunatic Asylum – St.John’s
John Crammer
ISBN: 0902241346
Closing the Asylum (The mental patient in modern society)
Looking at the treatment of the mentally ill, this book discusses NHS spending cuts and the recent drive towards closing mental hospitals and treating patients by means of “community care”. It looks at Victorian institutionalization and speculates on the adequacy of community care and support.
Peter Barham
ISBN-13: 9780140265804
IISBN-10: 0140265805
The Dark Awakening: A history of St Lawrence’s Hospital, Bodmin
C. T Andrews
ISBN-13: 9780950472218
ISBN-10: 0950472212
Hospital and Asylum Architecture in England 1840-1914
Published in 1991, Jeremy Taylors comprehensive and detailed study covers the majority of the Victorian Asylums built of a 150 year period. Twenty eight pages are devoted to the rise of the Victorian and Edwardian asylums – from ad-hoc designs through the corridor, radiating pavilion, echelon and colony patterns. Taylor supplies comprehensive lists of asylums, architects and projects.
Jeremy Taylor
ISBN 0720120594
Madness in Its Place: Narratives of Severalls Hospital, 1913-97
This fascinating study presents a unique social history of psychiatry in the twentieth century. It brings together the memories and narratives of over sixty patients and workers who lived, or were employed, in Severalls Psychiatric Hospital, Essex, England. Personal accounts are contextualised both in relation to wider developments and issues in twentieth-century mental health, and in relation to policies and changes in the hospital itself. Organised around the theme of space and place, and drawing upon both quantitative and qualitative material, chapters deal with key areas such as gender divisions, power relations, patterns of admission and discharge, treatments, and the daily lives and routines of patients and nurses of both sexes.
Diana Gittins
ISBN: 0415167868
Mental Health Care in Modern England: The Norfolk Lunatic Asylum/St Andrew’s Hospital, 1810-1998
A meticulous analysis of the Norfolk Lunatic Asylum (which) gives a well-balanced, empirically grounded analysis both of the asylum and of what replaced it. An informed, clearly-structured narrative about a complex sequence of institutional development. Has proved an invaluable teaching aid for undergraduates studying the politics and practice of modern medicine.
Steven Cherry
ISBN: 0851159206
Mental Disability in Victorian England: The Earlswood Asylum 1847-1901
This book contributes to the growing scholarly interest in the history of disability by investigating the emergence of ‘idiot’ asylums in Victorian England. Using the National Asylum for Idiots, Earlswood, as a case-study, it investigates the social history of institutionalization, privileging the relationship between the medical institution and the society whence its patients came.
David Wright
ISBN: 0199246394
Mind Over Matter – A Study Of The Country’s Threatened Mental Asylums
The first comprehensive study of the current plight of Britains mental hospitals. These attractive and imposing Victorian buildings, carefully designed with extensive landscaped grounds, are now facing an uncertain future. By the year 2000, 98 out of a total of 121 will have closed. The report calls for tighter planning controls to be brought in to prevent the loss of both buildings and grounds to over-development. Published October 1995.
The North Wales Hopsital, Denbigh 1842 – 1995
This book, incorporating some 70 photographs, tells the fascinating history of the former North Wales Hospital, Denbigh between 1842 and 1995. The hospital was built predominately to provide for Welsh Pauper Lunatics, the majority of whom were monoglot Welsh speakers, so that they could be cared for and treated in their own language instead of being sent to English Asylums.
Clwyd Wynne
ISBN: 9780951483145
Parc Hospital,The Last Days
A powerful collection of photgraphs and comments from a psychiatric hospital as it moves towards closure.
Mark Saunders
ISBN: 9780951483145
Proper House: Bedford Lunatic Asylum,1812-1860
Bernard Cashman
ISBN: 0951362623
Psychiatry for the Rich: History of Ticehurst Private Asylum, 1792-1917
Exploring the way private asylum proprietors sought to develop and maintain a share of the market in mental health care, and how the families of patients were themselves deeply involved in the decisions about care, treatment and referral. Psychiatry for the Rich reconstructs middle and upper class attitudes to mental disorder, certification and confinement, as well as their changing evaluation of care. Through a detailed history of the asylum at Ticehurst in Sussex, Charlotte MacKenzie explores the consumer revolution which stimulated the proliferation of madhouses. She includes accounts of patients’ own experiences at Ticehurst and discusses the changing developments at the asylum through the course of the nineteenth century amidst changes in therapeutic regimen and calls for lunacy reform.
Charlotte MacKenzie
ISBN: 0415088917
Springfield Hospital – A Short History
A small book produced by the current Mental Health Trust at Wandsworth that covers the early history of the First Asylum to be built in Surrey, this publication should be available via the Trust.
Ian Lodge Patch
Stone House – The City of London Asylum
The Hospital at Stone House was unique, being the only Asylum owned and run by the Corporation of London and served the community of 139 years. This book covers the entire history and is filled with photos, account and descriptions from the hospital during the time it was open.
Francine Payne
ISBN: 0955646006
Storthes Hall Remembered
The author, Ann Littlewood, started working at Storthes Hall Hospital in 1968 and her fascinating account traces the history of the site at Kirkburton from before the construction of the hospital, during it’s lifetime until closure (1904-1991). There are chapters within the book relating to the lives and treatment of the patients and those who were responsible for them. Patients from all parts of England, particularly Huddersfield, Dewsbury, Halifax and Barnsley were admitted to this hospital.
Ann Littlewood
ISBN: 1862180466
Sweet Bells Jangled Out of Tune: A History of the Sussex Lunatic Asylum (St.Francis Hospital, Haywards Heath)
Mr Gardner has achieved what others have only hoped to do-he has written a very concise historical guide to one particular personal contact in the otherwise neglected and sometimes badly documented story of “madhouses”. People tend to forget nowadays that these institutions functioned in a somewhat “Victorian” manner until recent times and a lot of what happened inside the walls was either not documented or ignored.
James Gardner
ISBN:0953610101
The Victorian Asylum
Dreaded and reviled by many, these nineteenth-century buildings provide a unique window on how the Victorians housed and treated the mentally ill. Despite initially good intentions, they became warehouses for societys outcasts at a time when cures were rare. Isolated, hidden in the countryside and surrounded by high walls, most have been closed since the 1980s, their original use largely forgotten. In The Victorian Asylum Sarah Rutherford gives an insight into their history, their often imposing architecture and their later decline and brings to life these haunting buildings, some of which still survive today
Sarah Rutherford
ISBN: 9780747806691
Underground and Military Books
After the Wall: Traces of the Soviet Empire
A stunning photography book with some superb photos of the far flung remnants of the Soviet Empire
Eric Lusito
ISBN: 978-1-904587-75-0
Bomboozled: How the US Governement misled itself and its people into believing they could survive a Nuclear Attack
Interesting book that exposes the truth behind the Cold War propoganda undertaken by the US towards it citizens. In depth look at the setup of the US Civil Defense efforts.
Susan Roy
ISBN:978-0-9823585-7-3
The Untold Exploits of Britain’s Most Daring Cold War Spy Mission: BRIXMIS
A really good book giving an exciting read focused on the BRIXMIS (British Mission to The Soviet Forces in Germany). Realy superb, real life James Bond stuff!
Tony Geraghty
ISBN:0-00-638673-3
Cold War Secret Nuclear Bunkers: Passive Defence of the Western World During the Cold War
An excellent book detailing the rise and fall and structure of the various bunkers in the UK. A must read for bunker fans.
Nick McCamley
ISBN: 184415508-0
Cold War: Building for Nuclear Confrontation 1946-1989
Superb, definitive book published by English Heritage that details many many buildings and bunkers and installations built during the Cold War
Wayne Cocroft and Roger Thomas
ISBN:9781873592816
In Defense of Freedom; A History of RAF Greenham Common
A privately published and difficult to obtain book detailing the history from its origins to closure of the notorious RAF Greenham Common airbase that housed American Ground Launched Nuclear Cruise Missiles.
J.J.Sayers
The Foxenden Quarry Deep Shelter
The Foxenden Quarry Deep Shelter in York Road, Guildford, was consructed beneath Allen House Grounds in 1941 to provide further air raid shelters for the Guildford population. The local publication covers the brief history of the shelter in impressive detail, it can be brought from the local tourist information centre in Guildford.
Helen Chapman Davies
ISBN: 0954375635
Fuhrungskomplex Falkenhagen: Fotografische Perspektiven und Militarhistorische Aspekte
An interesting book (entirely in German) outlining the history and use of the Main command bunker of the Warsaw pact forces.
Kemnitz/Rentsch
ISBN: 3-003015534-1
Royal Air Force Holmpton: A brief history.
A small booklet available from the RAF Holmpton museum detailing the history of this significant radar site
Holmpton Initiative Project Planning Office
Major and Mrs Holt’s Battlefield Guide: Normandy Landing Beaches
A really easy to use guidebook of the Normandy D-Day coastline. Includes maps and routes to follow.
Major and Mrs Holt
ISBN: 9780850526622
Major and Mrs Holt’s Battlefield Guide to the Somme
An excellent book if you have any interest in WW1, offers popular sites, routes and items off the beaten track all in an easily followed format.
Major and Mrs Holt
ISBN: 9780850524147
Nuclear War Survival Skills
American book published by the Oakridge National Laboratory during the Cold War detailing how to take precautions to survive a Nuclear War. Includes instructions on how to build a variety of fallout shelters, fallout meters, ventilation etc from easily found material. We were lucky to find ours here in a bunker in the UK, and the owner was kind enough to give it to us!
Cresson H. Kearny
ISBN:0-939002-02-7
Overlord Coastline: The Major D-Day Locations
An excellent guidebook, although slightly old now, detailing where and what you can see of the Normandy D-Day coastline
Stephen Chicken
ISBN: 9781873376140
The Royal Observer Corps Underground Monitoring Posts
Probably the best ROC based book on the market at the moment, lots of photos of posts, equipment and personnel all backed up with a robust history and archive material.
Mark Dalton
ISBN:9780956440556
The Secret Sussex Resistance
A short book detailing the history of the secretive WW2 Auxiliary units of the Home Guard.
Stuart Angell
ISBN: 1873793820
Stages of Emergency: Cold War Nuclear Civil Defense
A book comparing and contrasting the different approaches to Nuclear Civil Defense taken by the Britsh, Americans and Canadians.
Tracy C. Davis
ISBN: 978-0-8223-3970-0
Subterranean Britain: Cold War Bunkers
A really excellent photo book of bunkers in the UK. Includes never before seen pictures of the ‘Burlington’ citadel at Corsham. This is a TimeChamber recommended read!
Nick Catford
ISBN:9780956440525
Surrey’s Ancient Stone Mines
This book details the ancient stone mines that riddle the Surrey countryside
Peter Burgess
ISBN: 978-0-9556081-1-7
War Plan UK: The Secret Truth about Britain’s “Civil Defence”
THE definitive book, published at the height of the Cold War, that exposes the truth behind the governments plans in the event of a nuclear war. Essential reading for anyone interested in the Cold War and its politics.
Duncan Campbell
ISBN:0-586-08479-7