Jonathan Crofts is the author of The Portsmouth Connection: Stories and Lives of Devon Villages and Meadows, Mansions and Munitions: Stories and Lives of Cambridge Park.
Jonathan Crofts lived in southwest London from 1993, but since 2021 has split his time between Devon and London.
After leaving Bristol University with a degree in Modern Languages, he embarked on a career in theatre and television, including sixteen years at the BBC, and latterly working all over the world as a consultant with media and broadcast organisations. His time in TV drama production included the BAFTA award-winning Our Friends In The North.
Jonathan has followed local history over the last thirty years through reading, talks, walks and visits, as well as his own research and photography, and published his first book on his London neighbourhood, Meadows Mansions and Munitions, in 2021.
His wife Monica Byles has spent over thirty years in book publishing, both fiction and non-fiction, and has guided and supported Jonathan in the production of his latest book, The Portsmouth Connection. Her own family have resided in or had links with Devon since the Norman Conquest.
In 2021 Jonathan and Monica moved into their four-hundred-year-old farmhouse in Chawleigh. Intrigued by the Portsmouth ‘P’ and crest over their front door, the story of the house emerged on closer research, alongside the history of their village and the aristocratic Portsmouth estate and family which once owned it.
In 2024 Jonathan became a trustee of the Friends of the historic All Saints Church in nearby Eggesford, FEAST. FEAST succeeded in the 1990s in keeping open the Church, threatened with closure by the Church of England, with its fine monuments and fascinating history, and still works today to preserve and enhance the building and the beautiful site.
The book is a tribute to the people of Chawleigh, Eggesford, and the wider estate over the last five centuries.
www.facebook.com/RichmondBridgeMedia/