Lydia's son, John Saunders by Pip Wright

In 2005, I published a book entitled ‘Lydia’. It took me twenty years to research and write. You may have read it. If so, all well and good. You will have met a number of characters who appear in this book.

For all that, it should not be necessary to have read Lydia’s story before embarking on ‘John Saunders’. It was always my intention that this book should stand alone.

As with all of my historical novels, John Saunders traces real people and real events, sticking as accurately to the way history unravelled as possible. I like to believe this is a story that its characters would recognise and say, ‘Yes, that was pretty much the way it happened.’

I may be under-estimating when I say there are probably between one and two hundred people alive today who can trace their ancestry back to Lydia and her son John Saunders. Some of them, passing through male lines still bear the surname Alexander or Saunders (different versions of the same name). Others, including my own four children and seven grandchildren, are less clearly descended from them but can be shown to have done so, nevertheless. Some like Lydia and John have never strayed far from their roots. Others can be found across at least a dozen countries; and all the result of a brief romance over two hundred years ago.

So, here it is. The tale of Lydia’s son John Saunders. It is a simple story told almost entirely in the order events happened. To help the reader, at the end of the book, you will find a short family tree and a pair of maps, though the story rarely strays far from the village of Cotton, the parish where John Saunders spent his entire life.

John Saunders is priced at £8 (plus £3 for post and packing)