Eastern Daily Press journalist Ian Collins is hoping to grab a slice of the Christmas book sales market, with a collection of pictures of the seaside town of Southwold in Suffolk.

Ian, who is the EDP’s London correspondent, has put together Making Waves, Artists in Southwold, a collection of works of art by hundreds of artists from the 17th century until today, who all portray the seaside town.

Art enthusiast Ian has loved the town of Southwold since his early days as a cub reporter on the Lowestoft Journal some 20 years ago, and he now owns a second home in the town where he likes to escape at weekends.

He said: “I have always known the near-island town but I first became hooked on Southwold some 20 years ago when interviewing Margaret Mellis – a pivotal figure in the British modern art world from the 1930s, who, when I first knew her, collected driftwood for abstract constructions with a student protégé named Damien Hurst.

“Margaret led a chapter in an East Anglian art book I published in 1990 and now she has inspired a bigger volume – my portrait of our beloved town through the eyes of artists both past and present.”

Two of Ian’s Archant colleagues have also published local history books.

Neil Haverson, chief writer for Let’s Talk magazine, has edited a nostalgic book entitled Schooldays, which takes an affectionate look back at education in the 50s and 60s.

It allowed Neil to look at what the newspapers were saying about education 40 years ago when schools were campaigning for the return of the “three Rs”.

Meanwhile Trevor Heatone, editor of EDP Event listing magazine, has written Nasty Norwich, a history book for children about Norwich’s past which looks at all that was vile and gruesome from the Stone Age to the second world war.