New Stour & Avon, July 30, 2021
Arts & Entertainment
Gwen’s publishing debut at age of 82 By Faith Eckersall
A project to raise money for Witchampton’s 15th century church tower has resulted in one villager becoming a published author at the age of 82. Gwen O’Brien has seen About a Village: Witchampton and More go on sale this month. It’s her first venture into solo book publishing but, as the longserving editor of the village newsletter – she’s been producing it for the last 18 years – she had plenty of material to choose from. “The church is 15th century and needs a lot of looking after and they wanted some fundraising done so I suggested compiling a book from the stories in the newsletter,” says Gwen. A computer whizz, Gwen had saved newsletters from
the millennium onwards on her computer harddrive. After reading every one of them she compiled up to 140 pages of publicationworthy tales, which she produced between May and March. Despite occurring in what is thought of as the modern era, Gwen says the stories show how village life has changed in just 21 years. She designed the book herself, using her own painting as the cover and teaching herself the intricacies of laying out a manuscript for publication. Gwen, who was president of
the village’s Women’s Institute for 16 years, believes her experience helping to produce their book of walks in 2007, which beat more than 700 others in a WI competition, helped. However, she says, producing the Witchampton book, which also covers the Crichels, was a ‘bit of a learning curve’. “I did it on separate Word pages before I learned how to string them together,” she says. She also added photos, old and new, of village locations.
One problem was covering the pandemic era which affected the village in the same way as many others – almost everything got cancelled, Gwen says. “In the end I emailed a lot of people that I know and asked them to tell me what happened to them in lockdown and we had some amazing stories back; a person who was bereaved, someone whose first greatgrandchild was born, another person who’d got stuck in Spain,” she says. The book was launched with a cake sale at Witchampton’s Village Shop and costs £10, with all profits from the sale going to the Witchampton Church Tower restoration fund. Copies are on sale at Witchampton Village Shop and from the editor by emailing: gwenob@ btinternet.com.
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DAD’S ARMY Thur 5th to Sat 7th August 7.30pm Tickets £16 Matinees Fri 6th & Sat 7th August, 2.30pm Tickets £16 1 in 10 tickets FREE! Via Box Office only
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PLEA S KE E CHEC EP KI OUR NG WEBS ITE
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