Dr Jim Lewis has spent most of his career in the consumer electronics industry, apart from a three-year spell in the Royal Air Force servicing airborne and ground wireless communications equipment. When working in the Lea Valley for Thorn EMI Ferguson he represented the company abroad on several occasions and was involved in the exchange of manufacturing technology. Currently he is a Consultant to Terry Farrell & Partners on the historical development of London’s Lea Valley. He is also a volunteer with Social Services teaching students who have learning difficulties. A freelance writer (with eighteen published books), researcher and broadcaster for his specialist subject – London’s Lea Valley - he also has a genuine passion for encouraging partnership projects within the local community, which, in the long term, are planned to help stimulate social and economic regeneration.

In 2012 Dr Lewis was appointed Contributory International Professor by the Clark H Byrum School of Business, Marian University, Indianapolis, for his work with students on The Modern British Service Economy.

London’s Lea Valley - Home of Britain’s Growing Food and Drink Industry not only uncovers the Lea Valley’s emerging food and drink industry, but also highlights the history of those regional establishments that provided sustenance for earlier generations. While it is not possible to cover every food retailer, manufacturer, wholesaler and microbrewery within the Lea Valley region, it is hoped that those establishments mentioned in this book will give the reader a “flavour” of how the valley’s food and drink industries are evolving and changing. In fact, it would seem that before this book has reached the printer, another micro-brewery has popped up or a new food wholesaler, manufacturer and distributor has emerged.

When Jim Lewis met the directors of the RSA Trust, the charity responsible for the concept and the running of Enfield Island Village, in January 2015, it was to discuss the commissioning of a book that would tell the story of the former government controlled Royal Small Arms Factory (RSAF) after privatisation and closure in 1987. However, during discussions it soon became clear, with the impending two-hundredth anniversary of the birth of the Enfield Lock armoury, that a unique opportunity existed to link the story of the RSAF site with the founding of the RSA Trust. And as one Trust director put it, this is the classic story of “from swords into ploughshares”. Surprising as it may seem, the story of the birth of the Enfield Lock armoury in 1816 and the methods of manufacture that then existed within the British small arms industry has never been completely told.

From Ice Age to Wetlands – the Lea Valley’s Return to Nature was inspired by the imaginative community-focused project known as Walthamstow Wetlands. The Walthamstow Reservoirs in Waltham Forest, London are being transformed into an urban wetland nature reserve which will give visitors free access to the wildlife and industrial heritage of this historic area. In this book, Jim Lewis highlights the many and various major events that have helped to shape the Lea Valley and its environs. He also takes the opportunity to explain how scientists, engineers, developers and agriculturalists are coming together in their understanding of the importance of helping industry, agriculture and nature to co-exist by developing new ways of protecting our diminishing natural resources.

Much has been written about the physical side of the Great War with graphic descriptions of flooded trenches, glutinous mud, unrelenting shelling, vicious barbed wire and the extreme suffering of both Allied and German troops. However, historians have paid less attention to the embryonic and emerging electronic technology that completely revolutionised the conduct of the Great War and would also dictate the pattern and strategies for all wars to come. This technology began life in London’s Lea Valley at Ponders End, Enfield and it can be claimed that the region is the birthplace of the post-industrial revolution – the technological revolution. While this was a world-changing event in media and communication terms, the technology was soon adopted by the military authorities to develop new strategies in the killing fields of Europe and beyond.