DOUG McClean's love of literature led to his fascination with the fabled Gloucestershire poet F W Harvey. Three cheers for that!

Doug, founder owner of the Forest Bookshop at Coleford and previously a book publisher, has retired – on paper at least.

Now, with a little more time on his hands, he has returned to his first love and has willingly and handsomely combined work with words to reprint the much vaunted Anthony Boden epic on Harvey's stimulating and exciting life: F W Harvey, Soldier, Poet.

Harvey's work is enjoying an amazing if not entirely unexpected revival.

The admiration and love for his work had simmered gently beneath the surface for many years. Doug's action in first producing Harvey's Collected Poems followed by A Gloucestershire Lad and then a limited edition of Ducks suddenly made the former Yorkley resident a bookshelf 'must have'.

Comrades in Captivity followed last year, the whole being crowned by the latest reprint – a work widely praised by Harvey fans and particularly those who form the basis of his admiration club, the F W Harvey Society.

Doug admits to total fascination with Harvey – perhaps, he says, "because we share the same birthday, March 26." He particularly likes his local work and has set some of Harvey's verse to music.

He says: "I'm pleased Harvey's work has once again become so popular. In reality I don't think it was ever out of fashion but it had become difficult to obtain. My hope is that the reprints make one of our greatest personalities receive the recognition he deserves not only locally but nationally."

Doug is also branching out with a reprint of No Quarter!, the rip-roaring Civil War yarn written in the 1880s by Thomas Mayne Reid who for eight years lived near Ruardean.

The tale romps round and through the Forest from Ruardean, Coleford, St Briavels, Lydbrook, Lydney, Newnham and Newland into Gloucester and Bristol and back to the Forest.

Doug says early editions of the book change hands for hundreds of pounds a copy.

The new edition, available next month, has been fully re-set and runs to 426 pages. There is a six page foreward and footnotes for the benefit of modern-day readers. – JP.