What we offer

This website details our wide range of specialist book publications that Mortons Media publish.

We create these books by drawing upon the wealth of experience, skill and insight that only a major magazine publisher can offer - backed up by Europe's largest motorcycle image archive.

• Looking for a great gift? Our books start from just £3.50 including p&p!

Battle for Bluebell

132 Pages | IN STOCK - by Colin Tyson | £6.99

This comprehensive 132 page full colour, perfect bound ‘bookazine' has been written by Colin Tyson, editor of Old Glory magazine. Colin also edits Bluebell News.

The Bluebell Railway in East Sussex was the first full size railway to be taken over from British Railways by steam preservationists in 1960.

This book draws on both timeline reports from house journal Bluebell News as well as never previously published information and gives every location the full ‘before and after’ treatment.

The bookazine will tell how when planning permission was initially refused, the preservationists did not give up.

It includes information on the longest tunnel in preservation, along with a 10-arch viaduct and a cutting filled with over 100,000 tonnes of domestic waste.

Colin reveals how since 1971 The Bluebell has had ambitions to extend another six miles northwards – and now the culmination of this 42 year project has at last seen trains return to East Grinstead from late March this year.

This is the first available full story of Bluebell’s biggest-ever project, timed just as the extension is completed and open to visitors.

• Order post-free on-line, or available from limited W H Smith stores

Island Racer 2013

132 Pages | IN STOCK - by Tony Carter | £7.99

The Isle of Man TT event has made history ever since the first person looked at the lump of rock in the Irish sea and said to his friend: "You know what would be a great idea here? A motorcycle race against the clock!"

The Isle of Man TT has given us fans moments of pure joy, total admiration and sheer exhilaration. It has also given us moments of absolute horror and terrific sadness that, at the time, never felt as though it would ever leave our world.

If you want the ultimate sporting example of courage then here it is. Wrapped up in an island, in THE Island, of people and places who for two specific weeks of the year embrace every second and give up every inch of their home so that those greats can come and do things on two wheels that you never get to see anywhere else.

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Sonderausgabe: 100 Jahre Triumph

132 Pages | IN STOCK - by James Robinson| £TBA

Triumph-Motorräder gehören ohne Zweifel zu den berühmtesten Maschinen der Welt, insbesondere die Bonneville. Obwohl Steve McQueen auch auf einer Harley-Davidson, Honda oder vielleicht Ducati am International Six Days Trial hätte teilnehmen können, entschied er sich für eine Triumph.

Berühmte Namen wie Marlon Brando, James Dean und selbst der fiktionale Charakter „Fonzie“ (aus der US-Comedyserie „Happy Days“) – alle „kings of cool“ – werden mit der Marke in Verbindung gebracht. Und Triumph-Motorräder tauchen immer wieder in Kinofilmen auf, wie zum Beispiel dem Tom-Cruise-Actionfilm „Mission: Impossible“, um nur ein Beispiel zu nennen. Triumph-Motorräder sind auch heute noch, was sie schon immer waren: stilvoll, praktisch und tough … mit einer kleinen Prise Rebell.

Seit mehr als 100 Jahren werden Maschinen mit dem Triumph-Emblem auf dem Tank gebaut. Manche sagen, dass Triumph in der Zeit vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg die Motorradindustrie gerettet hätte, denn die britische Marke tat, was alle anderen versprachen: Sie baute zuverlässige, praktische Maschinen durch die das Motorradfahren eine rentable Angelegenheit wurde. Obwohl das Unternehmen in den zwanziger Jahren eine Flaute erlebte – wie so viele andere Motorradhersteller auch – hatten sich die Briten bis Ende der dreißiger Jahre zum Marktführer hochgearbeitet. Unter der Ägide des begabten und innovativen Edward Turner baute Triumph das wichtigste Modell in der Geschichte der britischen Motorradindustrie: die Speed Twin von 1938. Diese Maschine sollte die Grundlage für die nächsten 30 Jahre Motorradbau in Großbritannien werden. Ob die Speed Twin wirklich solange als Vorreiter hätte dienen sollen ist eine andere Frage, aber in den 1940er, 1950er und 1960ern verkörperte die Maschine die Erfolgsformel der britischen Motorradindustrie...

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Dambusters

132 Pages | IN STOCK - | £7.99

To commemorate the landmark mission, Squadron Leader Clive Rowley (Retd) a former Officer Commanding the RAF Battle of Britain Memorial Flight, takes a fresh look at an old story with the benefit of some modern research to aid the process.

This special bookazine, which includes some previously unpublished pictures and some stunning artwork, commemorates the men of No.617 Squadron plus the engineering brilliance of Barnes Wallis and his colleagues at Vickers and Avro.

In 1943 Operation Chastise, as the Dams Raid was officially named, established a legend that still resonates today.

• Order post-free on-line, or available from limited W H Smith stores

Cold War: Sex, Spies and Nuclear Missiles

132 Pages | TBA - by Dan Sharp| £TBA

Fifty years ago the world teetered on the brink of nuclear holocaust. The pivotalyear of the Cold War, 1963 saw Britain rocked by revelations about war minister John Profumo sharing a glamorous young mistress with a Soviet spy. The nation’s first nuclear submarine was launched and the Polaris missile system was bought from the Americans, sparking a deadly new phase in the conflict and mass protests. The RAF was on standby to launch its V-bombers at just four minutes' notice and English Electric Lightning jet fighters were Britain's first line of air defence. The year saw Beatlemania taking hold, the Vietnam War escalating wildly, the Great Train Robbers playing monopoly with real money, Beeching dropping his axe on the railways, a top British intelligence officer revealed as a Soviet agent, Sean Connery in From Russia With Love, Steve McQueen in The Great Escape and the assassination of US President John F Kennedy.

The nuclear holocaust was close at hand yet it seemed that the fresh-faced youth of Britain, with their pop music, their peace protests, their disposable cash and their boundless optimism might just have the power to save the day. This is the story of Britain at the height of the Cold War: a snapshot of the sex, the spies and the nuclear missiles of 1963.

• A date for this title is not set, but expected in next 2 months.

Brunel’s Big Railway

132 Pages | IN STOCK - Robin Jones | £6.99

This comprehensive 132 page full colour, perfect bound ‘bookazine’ has been written by Heritage Railway founding editor Robin Jones and is lavishly illustrated with both archive and modern-day photographs.

With the £1 billion electrification of the London Paddington to Bristol Temple Meads main line railway in its very early stages, questions have been asked about how the modernisation programme will impact on the rich legacy of heritage structures along the 116 mile route.

The railway was the first main line to be constructed by engineering genius Isambard Kingdom Brunel, and as such is one of Europe’s greatest transport treasures. Indeed, there have been calls for it to be named as a World Heritage Site because so much survives from his day.

This new book looks at the story of Brunel’s Big Railway – for that is exactly what it was – its revolutionary design and its groundbreaking engineering features, like Maidenhead Bridge, Sonning Cutting, Box Tunnel, the Avon Viaduct at Bath and many more.

It tells the story of the great record-breaking locomotives built by Brunel’s young chief engineer Daniel Gooch and of the big steamships built at Bristol.

Finally, the book looks at the many historic Brunel features newly listed by English Heritage in order to protect them in advance of the electrification scheme – of which Brunel – once voted the second ‘greatest’ Briton of all time in a TV poll – would have certainly approved.

• Order post-free on-line, or available from limited W H Smith stores

Railways and the Holocaust – The Trains that Shamed the World

132 Pages | IN STOCK - Robin Jones | £6.99

It may seem totally illogical, at first glance, for Britain’s foremost publisher of Railway magazines to produce a publication which talks about railways being vehicles of ‘shame’, yet this superb new landmark bookazine by Heritage Railway editor Robin Jones revisits the Holocaust from the unique perspective of the railways, and helps you examine and challenge history from a new perspective.

Feature articles include:

• Without railways, the deaths of up to 11 million people in concentration and murder camps at the hands of Nazi Germany would never have been possible

• How the railway network was used to span the whole of Nazi occupied Europe, in which trains were packed with innocent men, women and children in the most inhumane conditions and arrived daily at the terminus

• Why did railwaymen go along with genocide? Were they really ‘simply obeying orders’?

• Why were the railway lines leading to camps such as Auschwitz not bombed by the Allies?

• An examination of the system by which trains to the death camps were organised on a Europe-wide basis.

• Order post-free on-line, or available from limited W H Smith stores

Settle & Carlisle Revival

132 Pages | IN STOCK - Brian Sharpe | £6.99

This comprehensive 132 page full colour, perfect bound ‘bookazine' has been written and edited by experienced writer, photographer and deputy editor of Heritage Railway magazine Brian Sharpe.

The 72 mile Settle & Carlisle railway, running across the roof of England, was threatened with closure in the 1960s and again in the 1980s. Since then, not only was the line reprieved from closure again after an eight year battle, but train services were expanded.

This book looks at the revival in the fortunes of the Settle & Carlisle and features include:

• Saving the line was not the end of the story – it was just the beginning

• How the timetabled services have increased in frequency, with many of the previously closed stations reopened and even heavy freight traffic returning in significant quantity

• The steam-hauled excursions over the line have gone from strength to strength.

• Order post-free on-line, or available from limited W H Smith stores