Wigan woman stunned when editor turned up to deliver her book

Avid reader Lynda Bannister had placed an order through Amazon for Alan Roby’s award-winning local history tome about the 19th century Up Holland diarist Nelly Weeton, hoping to delve into it the next day.

But when it hadn’t come after three weeks and the online market place said it was probably lost in the post, she sent a message to the publisher raising the issue.

Soon after she and husband Carl had just come home to Kendal Street, Gidlow, from a day out when there was a knock at the door.

And who should be standing there but Mr Roby himself.

Former admin worker Lynda said: “He said ‘I believe you’ve not received a copy of my book, so I thought I’d better bring you one myself’.

“I was flabbergasted. What good service and what a lovely gesture and nice man, especially when we discovered he’d been round once when we were out.”

Mr Roby, 77, said: “She wouldn’t have been so lucky if she’d been living in Yorkshire! As it is I’m in Orrell and go into Wigan regularly, so it wasn’t much trouble. I got the message saying she’d not received the book so I decided to do something about it.

“Mrs Bannister was over the moon. I hope she enjoys it.”

Miss Weeton, Governess and Traveller, published by Wigan Council’s archives services, chronicles the incredible life of Nelly Weeton who was a private teacher and journal-writer who defied the conventions of her age.

She overcame challenges including domestic abuse, wrote passionately and in a forward-thinking way about the rights and capabilities of women and travelled around the north of England and to the Isle of Man.

The book represents the culmination of Mr Roby’s four-decade fascination with her life and achievements and weaves together extensive extracts from her diaries and letters in a newly-updated biography, which brings a host of important facts about her to the bookshelves for the first time.

Mrs Bannister learnt of the book from a woman she met in St Thomas the Martyr Church in Up Holland.

Copies of the book can be obtained at borough libraries and the Museum of Wigan Life.