The thinking behind the cover change

The paperback edition of The Accidental Detectorist – published late September 2023 – has a different cover design from the hardback. Less bucolic, more object-based. The thinking goes that the original design (which I’ve used as the main image on my website homepage) was a bit airy-fairy, indistinguishable from any number of the ‘nature’ books currently saturating the middle-class reading market. Instead we’ve changed the colour palette and added objects that include a Celtic gold stater, a Roman dragonesque brooch and, er, a ring pull, c1970s. All of them detectorists’ bucket listers (except the ring pull of course, which is both bugbear and running joke). In the end the hobby of metal detecting is finds driven though the maxim of the great Dave Crisp, finder of the Frome Hoard of 52,503 Roman coins, implies a maturity most of us can only aspire to: ‘A find is a bonus. A good find is a good bonus.’