This is another coffee table book and it is not all that new. It was first published in 2002. We all thought it long overdue, as there was no real informaiton about the lighthouses of "The Corporation of Trinity House, London" published in book form before (other than a few local books)

This book was written by Richard Woodman and Jane Wilson and is available at Amazon US

256 beautiful pages with fantastic photographs and historic and current information.

Starting at the Northeast of England it shows the lighthouses along the coast of England and Wales as well as telling the story of the Trinity House Service.

A very informative as well as enjoyable book!

And on page 67, about Bishop Rock, you can see Stan's great-grandfather John Ball mentioned and quoted. In fact John Ball wrote quite a bit about life on lighthouses and he is quoted several times in the book. (some of his writing you can read on our pages )

Margret - does this book include photos of ALL of the Lighthouses of the UK?

By the right author, the subject of the disappearnce of the keeper from the lighthouse would make an interesting story, if not a book - it would have to be a fictional account, of course as there is no known cause except possibly for the 'rouge wave' possibility.

Entries in the diary foretell perhaps. A sad story but one that could tell the of the many hardships faced by the brave keepers.

The book will contain a LARGE number of the lighthouses - they don't claim to have pictures for all of them. And it will not be for the whole of the UK!

Trinity House only looks after England and Wales.

Scottland is serviced by the Northern Lighthouse Board and Ireland by the Commissioners for Irish Lights.

If you are looking for photographs of the Scottish lights I can recomend the Northern Lighthouse Board Website

And for Irish Lighthouses there are few better pictures than the series of Photo-Post-Cards from John Eagle, which can be seen here: The Irish Lighthouses Series

As for writing a book about John Ball ... Sounds like a good idea.
A freak wave has all but been ruled out. People have studied the weather conditions and the other keepers were interviewed etc.
Not sure if it is significant that this happened on John and Theresa's wedding anniversary? But nobody knows exactly why and how he vanished.

I stopped by my B&N this afternoon and ordered this book, Margret. $44 less 30%. I remember seeing it in the store before Christmas. Should have it next week.

Thanks for the recommendation.

Sounds like a good addition to the book collection, Margret. I wonder if you can help, John. I am unable to read the articles and diary entries - as each comes up, it shows up in really large print, but as soon as the image is complete, it drops back to very tiny print. Anything I can do to make it larger - maximizing the screen does not help. I would love to read all this material. Thanks!

The images that appear are jpg files (like photos). If you let your mouse pointer rest over the image after it resizes to fit your window, you'll see a graphic appear in the lower right area of the image.

Click on that icon and the graphic will blow up to full size. You will then have to scroll the window up and down (and probably left and right) to view the contents.

If you don't have a full-size window, you can increase the size of the window so you do less scrolling.

It's a function added to Windows XP.

I should have known that; I forgot that you have to place the mouse over the image so the scroll graphic will appear. Thank you. I enjoyed reading the articles and you are right; it would make a wonderful mystery novel! Margret, I think you and Stan should take on this project. You would be able to write a great fiction based on history story.