THE STORY OF HOLY ISLAND
The beautiful island of Lindisfarne is one of Britain's foremost places of pilgrimage, attracting 650,000 visitors each year. For many it is a kind of fairy-tale place, a world apart shrouded in myth and legend. Its spiritual qualities are there for all to experience, yet these do not derive from some fanciful past but from the very real lives of its people - including its saints - who have lived, worked, struggled against the elements or invasion, and kept faith over many centuries.
 
Kate Thistram, a historian and an island resident, tells the remarkable story of this captivating place and its people from its misty beginnings as part of the mainland in the Stone Age, right up to the present day. She traces each stage of its history including:

• its formation as an island
• the Roman and Anglo-Saxon eras
• the influence of Columba and Iona
• Aidan and his followers: Cuthbert, Cedd, Chadd
• the making of the Lindisfarne Gospels
• Hilda and the community at Whitby
• Bede and the monastic tradition
• the coming of the Vikings
• Holy Island before and after the Reformation
• the island in wartime
• the island today

Kate Tristram studied history at the universities of Oxford and Edinburgh and is a Canon of Newcastle Cathedral. Formerly Head of Theology at St Hild's college Durham she moved to Lindisfarne to become warden of Marygate House, an ecumenical retreat house and in 1983 became 'Deaconess of the Parish Church of St.Mary the Virgin, Holy Island' and one of the very first ordained female Anglican Priests. Now retired Kate continues to serve the church and community.

BIRDWATCHING ON HOLY ISLAND (2016)
This new hardback edition replaces Ian's much more modest paperback report which was published in 2007 and which is now both out of print and outdated. With over 50 colour pictures by some of the region's finest wildlife photographers, it provides much previously unpublished information about the island and its wildlife history. It also provides full details of all 330 species of birds from many parts of the world which have occurred on the island, some as great rarities and others as regular annual visitors.
 
The format provides season-by-season accounts designed to help visitors make the most of their time on the island and surrounding Lindisfarne National Nature Reserve. The book has been produced by NatureGuides, a London-based company specialising in high-quality publications and digital guides for an international market. The company was founded by part-time island resident Max Whitby, one of Britain's leading wildlife cameramen whose work is in constant demand by television and film companies. His BBC Two programme about island life over the course of a year is remembered by many.
 
Among topics included in Ian's new publication are:

• The fascinating Victorian and earlier 20th Century characters who stalked the island and flats
• How old-time naturalists shot birds without causing damage to their plumage
• The indiscriminate slaughter which led to the creation of the National Nature Reserve
• Tales of crafty crows which can identify guns when they see them
• How the famed garden designer Gertrude Jeykll used a shotgun to plant seeds
• The island Stoat which developed a taste for Fulmar oil
• How islanders used migrating Goldcrests to clear their homes of spiders

Ian is a retired regional journalist and Northumbria police press officer. He was an ornithological consultant for the Great North Museum - Hancock project in Newcastle and his expertise has been called upon by commercial companies planning developments which could affect local landscapes and wildlife.
 
His first love is Holy Island where he has been birdwatching for more than 40 years, carrying out long-term studies on species including Swallows. He and his wife bought a cottage in the village 25 years ago and spend as much time as possible on the island.
 
Ian has written regularly for "The Northumbrian", the county countryside magazine since its launching over 25 years ago. He provides regular feature on wildlife and other subjects for the island's monthly electronic newsletter which has a worldwide readership and for its print counterpart, "The Holy Island Times". He also provides a weekly Birdwatch column for the region's leading daily newspaper, "The Northern Echo".

THE BOOK OF KELLS
The Book of Kells is the most spectacular of a group of manuscripts created in Ireland and northern Britain between the seventh and tenth centuries,a period when Irish monasticism was in the vanguard of Christian culture. Its earliest history remains controversial but it was in the keeping of the monastery of Kells, Co. Meath, for most of the Middle Ages - hence its name - and has been in the library of Trinity College Dublin, since the mid seventeenth century. It is a masterpiece of medieval art - a brilliantly decorated copy of the four Gospels with full page illustrations of Christ, the Virgin and Child and the Evangelists, and a wealth of smaller decorative painting that does not always relate to the sacred text. The strange imagination displayed in the pages, the impeccable technique and the very fine state of its preservation make it an object of endless fascination.
 
This edition includes the most important of the fully decorated pages plus a series of enlargements showing the almost unbelievable minuteness of the detail - spiral and interlace patterns, human and animal ornament - a combination of high seriousness and humour. Accompanying the illustrations is a new, up to date text by Bernard Meehan, the current Keeper of Manuscripts at Trinity College Dublin. It provides a scholarly analysis of these exuberant inventions, the artists, the text and the writing, and a full account of the historical background to the miraculous world of the Book of Kells.
 
With 117 illustrations, 110 in colour

Painted Labyrinth
Made around 715/20 AD at the Island's monastery its maker was one of the greatest artists of the Anglo-Saxon and Celtic worlds.The book discusses:

• The world and faith around 700 AD
• Britain and Ireland in the 7th and 8th centuries
• When, where and how was the Lindisfarne Gospels produced
• The text, script and calligraphy of the Lindisfarne Gospels
• The Evangelist portraits
• Procedures for making a medieval manuscript
• What the Lindisfarne Gospels meant to its makers and to society

Michelle Brown PhD is Curator of Illuminated Manuscripts at The British Library, and author of many books and articles.