The books
After a scattergun start with an eclectic mix of titles in the late 1990s, we now specialise in walking/mountaineering and historical travel books. Our first book was Graham Wilson’s Macc & the Art of Long Distance Walking, now something of a minor classic. We didn’t know it at the time, but it set the style for future Millrace outdoor books: unusual, idiosyncratic, a good read. Alongside Wilson, Ronald Turnbull and Dave Hewitt have continued the trend in their own distinctive vein.
Our travel section of previously unpublished historical manuscripts began with Miss Brocklehurst on the Nile. Marianne Brocklehurst, a Victorian Egyptologist, is every bit as entertaining and eccentric as our present–day writers. The journals of Joseph and Katharine Fry, published together in A Tale of Two Journeys, give fascinating details of early 19th-century travel on the Continent, while Jack Cripps’ The Defending Officer’s Dog brings us to the 1940s and wartime Kenya, Ceylon and India.
All our books have a characteristic look and feel. They are small, printed on good quality paper and sewn, so they will not fall apart. Most are hardbacks, with heavy paper dust jackets, coloured endpapers and head and tail bands. They are printed in short print-runs (usually around 1,000 copies) in the UK.