WI: The June meeting opened with notification of coming events and arrangements, including the cookery demonstration on July 15 at Wilton Lodge and the coffee morning at Olive Thomas's on Thursday, August 7.

Birthday plants were given to Lindsay Carden and Lindsay Waddington.

Mr Barry Edwards then spoke on The Early History of Penguin gooks, which he had been collecting for 10-12 years.

Before 1935 there were no cheap paperbacks. Alan Lane started publishing such books under the name and logo of Penguin (dignified and flippout) with its distinctive colour coding, orange for fiction, green for crime, purple for travel, yellow for puzzles (these are now very rare as they were often included in gift parcels for the forces) blue for biographies, grey for politics and red for drama.

Penguin sales were phenomenal and spread to shops such as Woolworths and to railway stations, rising even through the paper rationing years.

Bodley Head acquired Pengiun and the paperback book industry developed (with other names such as Pan and Pelican being introduced) with a global industry.

Mr Edwards was thanked by Gillis Burgess for his enthusiastic and informative talk.

Coffee followed and a book title quiz devised by Margaret Wren was enjoyed.

The next meeting on July 1 is one arranged by the members and not the committee. Visitors are welcome.