Jeremy puts his three plays into one volume

The story of how a canal was built to take coal from the Radstock pits into Bath was recently the subject of a play written by a Peasedown St John playwright and performed in and around the village.

Jeremy Gibson's play A Somerset Navigation took a light-hearted look at the building of the canal and the sort of songs that would have been sung as the men worked.

That play and two others have now been published in book form and is available locally.

Jeremy originally studied law at Oxford and then wrote scripts for radio and the theatre and spent a decade working in theatre as a writer before training as a therapist and holding various mental health posts around the country.

But Jeremy continued to write plays, poems and songs which resulted in the fairly widespread performance local of A Somerset Navigation.

As well as the three plays the books also contain songs to be sung in conjunction with the works.

The two other plays in the book are The Fish and the Ring, based on a traditional folk tale, and The Little Red Car, adapted from a Susan Stoppani short story about the life of a red car, intended for younger audiences.

"Each of the plays, with running times of no more than half an hour can be produced very simply and informally," says Jeremy.

"They do not require a theatre space and have been performed in a wide variety of settings including schools, day centres, festival tents and open-air on a canal towpath."

A Somerset Navigation is published at £6.95 by Thumbnail Media. It is available from local shops or you can email jeremy_gibson@ tiscali.co.uk.