Middlesex, like my original home county of Essex, is underrated. Indeed, there are many people who believe that it no longer exists.

In legal and administrative terms this might be true but as I travelled around the county to do the research for 'Tales of Old Middlesex' I found interest among local people for its history and traditions.

'Tales of Old Middlesex' is part of a county-by-county series produced by Countryside Books of Newbury and my brief was to track down stories of people and events and retell them in a style that would be welcomed by contemporary readers.

Local history collections in the main public libraries proved the best sources of these tales and I also used old topographical books such as the Middlesex volume of Arthur Mees famous 'Kings England' series, first published in 1940.

The internet and even the formidable volumes of the Dictionary of National Biography helped flesh out the bare bones.

I tried to find lesser known aspects of the lives of the famous such as William Wilberforces unedifying dispute at the end of his life with a combative Vicar of Hendon over the building of a new church at Mill Hill or the teenage Queen Elizabeths dalliance with the unscrupulous 40-year-old Lord Thomas Seymour that may have been carried on in the bedchambers of the old palace at Hanworth.

Then there are the folk that few have heard of now Jonas Hanway, inventor of the umbrella, who is buried at Hanwell, or William Lindsay MP, promoter of the eccentric little railway line down to Shepperton.

There were the times when great