Background

How it all began

'Books on Bowls' first saw the light of day in the mid 1990s when my interest in bowls and books, combined with a fascination of the marvels of the Internet and Websites in particular, manifested itself as a fairly basic site with details of about 60 titles - all on flat green bowls.

A decade of development

In the intervening years the site has grown fivefold and, in addition to flat green, now includes books on indoor, crown green and short mat bowls. These codes, together with federation and carpet bowls, are briefly described and illustrated under Bowls Codes and information on the laws of all six versions is detailed under 'Laws and Rules' in the horizontal menu. A section on Videos was later followed by DVDs and Bowling Greens. From the start, visitors have been able to search for books by title and author, but new drop-down sub-menus, accessible from the main horizontal menu, now also allow for searches by country and decade of publication, as well as by nine different subjects - from 'Beginners' to 'Reference'.

Sources of information

Most of the information on the site derives from two sources: my own collection of approximately 295 books and, especially for books published prior to 1959, the bibliography in the voluminous Who's Who and Encyclopaedia of Bowls. Other sources include those mentioned in Buying Books and the increasing number of national online catalogues.

Synopsis

Where possible, a book's synopsis has been taken from the blurb (the résumé that appears on the dust jacket or cover). If this source is unavailable, I've written the synopsis myself.

Trivia

Book differences
It's conceivable that details of a particular title on this site may not coincide precisely with a copy that you own or have read, and there are a number of possible reasons for this, including: the books may be different editions; a book may be produced at different times by different publishers; and books are sometimes published in both hardback and softback versions.

First published
In most cases the use of the term 'First published', as seen in the detailed page of a particular book, is self-explanatory. However, when used in the description of yearbooks for example, there is room for possible confusion: does it relate to the title being reviewed or to the first book in the series, ie when the yearbook of the same name was first published? For the sake of consistency, I've used the latter definition throughout the site.