WARTIME Teesside REVISITED by Bill Norman (self-published, 23A Thames Avenue, Guisborough, TS14 8AE, £8.95; ISBN 0-9547325-0-2; www.billnorman.co.uk):

ON October 17, 1939, a German Heinkel bomber was brought down about 25 miles off Whitby by Spitfires based at Catterick. Two days later the two survivors of the four-man crew landed in their rubber dinghy near Sandsend, where they became the first Germans to be captured on English soil.

Since one of the men, though severely exhausted, had sought help for his barely-conscious companion, the "arrest" of the pair was really more of a rescue. The airmen remained so grateful to their rescuers that in 1979 they returned and enjoyed a warm reunion with two of their three captors, the late third of whom was represented by his son.

A heart warming story from the Second World War, to which Bill Norman devotes two pages, including four photos, in this updated edition of a highly-successful book first published in 1989.

Consisting largely of pictures with extended captions, assembled in a year-by-year chronology, its striking images include Redcar clock tower against a night-sky scissored by searchlights, and the bombed Middlesbrough railway station with a wrecked train at the platform, and ICI's Billingham offices skilfully camouflaged. Less obviously war-induced is a press picture from 1940 of five crestfallen-looking Boro lads holding a kite. By flying it they had breached Defence Regulations, which banned kite-flying - a possible means of signalling to the enemy.

Photos of road vehicles reveal that they had white bumpers, to show up in the blackout. Bill also includes pictures of surviving relics like pill boxes, and he explains how what appear in a recent aerial photo to be prehistoric earthworks on Sneaton Moor, south of Whitby, are the remains of a decoy site, one of several where fires and lights were lit to draw bombers away from industrial Teesside.

Original public notices and adverts - Darnbrough & Sons for Essential Shelter Comfort, including Dunlop Ear Drum Protectors - complete a fine and fitting record.

GEORGE HUDSON AND WHITBY by Cordelia Stamp (Caedmon of Whitby, 128 Upgang Lane, Whitby, YO21 3JJ, £5.95)

HERO or villain? The T. Dan Smith of his day, Railway King George Hudson (1800-71), a one-time darling of society, who fell from grace amid financial scandal, still sharply divides opinion.

On which side does Caedmon-publisher Cordelia Stamp come down? Surely heavily against Hudson when, discovering the barest of inscriptions on the gravestone of an uncle of Hudson, who bequeathed him substantial wealth, she observes: "To myself the omission of anything more than the death-date and surname was highly indicative of an indifference and lack of consideration for others..."

But then, with a swift change of points, Cordelia switches to become a stout defender of Hudson. Few stouter, in fact. "Hudson didn't defraud anyone or invent fraudulent companies,'' she insists.

Cordelia reckons Hudson's payment of dividends from capital - one of his offences, which masked the poor performance of his rail companies - arose from simple "bewilderment" at the small financial returns and a desire not to let shareholders down. She also contends that in buying rails in his own name, and then selling them to one of his companies at an inflated price, Hudson was merely "doing no more than most shopkeepers".

Within her perhaps-surprising advocacy for Hudson, Cordelia sets a short account of his undeniably major contribution to Whitby, where, with the Whitby-Pickering Railway safely in his pocket, he boldly set about developing the West Cliff for tourists, engaging the distinguished architect John Dobson to build the Royal Hotel and its associated terraces. Stretching to the uncompleted Royal Crescent, half-built when Hudson's empire collapsed, this is his impressive Whitby legacy.

Uniting Cordelia's two themes is a defence of his actions by Hudson himself, in a speech delivered at a public meeting in Whitby. Very valuably, Cordelia prints the entire text. As reported verbatim by the Whitby Gazette, this apologia, covering events in railway companies that included the York & North Midland, the Newcastle and Berwick, the Newcastle and Carlisle, and the London and North Western, was greeted with "numerous Cheers, calls of 'Hear Hear', bursts of Applause, and at one point, when Hudson suggested evidence against him was fabricated, Loud Cheers."

One hundred and forty years down the line, Cordelia delivers a strong vote of thanks.

Published: 07/06/2005