25 March 2021
Having struggled to find some non-fiction to recommend to students, particularly good history books for children, Woldingham teacher Mr Roy Peachey decided to write his own. Published earlier this month, Popes, Emperors and Elephants takes a look at the first thousand years of Christian culture and explores questions such as “What was so great about Greece?” and “Were the barbarians barbarians?” Closer to home, in a chapter called “What’s in a name?”, Mr Peachey writes about the rich information that can be gleaned from the meaning of place names. He looks at some specific examples well known to members of the Woldingham community, Clapham, Croydon and Purley, as well as the name Woldingham itself, which means “village of the forest people”.
Mr Peachey has also found the time to pen a children’s novel, The Race, which is on its way to the starting blocks with a publication date in June. International rugby player and former Commonwealth Games athlete Shaunagh Brown, who presented Woldingham’s Sports Awards in 2019, describes it as: “Not your typical happily ever after, Roy has written a wonderfully relatable and inclusive tale, where all are welcome, and the beauty of sport brings everyone together in the end. There are life lessons to be learned in this inspiring story with friendship at its heart.”