The first Victoria County History volume on Kent for over 75 years was launched on the Kingswear Paddle Steamer at the Historic Dockyard Chatham on the evening of 22 October 2009. This is another very attractive and readable volume in the VCH/ England’s Past for Everyone series for which the work was funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund. At £14.99 the book is extremely good value. It was produced under the academic leadership of Dr Andrew Hann and the VCH central and county committees with the help of a team of volunteers, most of whom were present at the launch. Also attending were representatives of local history societies and members of the Medway Archives and Local Studies Centre who were helpful and supportive throughout the research project which resulted in this book. The history of industrial change in the lower Medway Valley between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries has not until now received the attention it fully deserves, but this situation is enjoyably remedied by this volume. The book launch on the Kingswear Paddle Steamer and the river journey between Chatham, Rochester and Upnor castle brought home to me the immense scale and complexity of that change which was hard to absorb during the course of one pleasant evening. I was happy to see its details clearly set out in Panel Two of the book, the Development of the Frindsbury Peninsula, and the excellent map regression which accompanies it.

‘Get Involved’ is the motto of England’s Past for Everyone which appears on the back cover. This book demonstrates how successfully this can be done by the cooperation of academics, professionals and volunteers (alphabetical order here!) and it was a particular pleasure to see how past and present students of local and landscape history at the universities in Kent have contributed their skills, personal knowledge of maritime life and hard work to this project. A second EPE project on the history of the Medway towns is underway under the leadership of Dr Sandra Dunster.

The Medway Valley: a Kent Landscape Transformed, by Andrew Hann with contributions from John Newman, John Vigar and Sandra Dunster (Phillimore and Co. Ltd. in association with the Institute of Historical Research, 2009). ISBN 978-1-86077-600-7.