When planning the series of books, Watford in the 20th Century, we knew we had to do more than recycle our old decade supplements, which had been printed free with the newspaper between 1995 and 2004.

As a result, some of the decades have been enlarged by more than 25 per cent and all sport, additional information and features.

The second in the series, which covers South West Hertfordshire from 1939-1959, was launched last Thursday evening, fittingly at Watford Museum where, as I wrote last week, Andrew Lewis, helped me get my teeth into the first supplement, Watford at War, back in 1994.

That started a succession of decade supplements.

Once we had decided on the decade, I would collect the relevant files of the newspaper and take them home. You need tranquillity and an escape from the telephone to undertake research.

I would select a period, preferably when Watford did not have too many mid-week matches, and start the research. I found it more rewarding, attempting to complete this section of research within a set time, because that way you become immersed in the subject.

In fact I became so immersed, I discovered I had started writing street names from the locality as they did back some 70 years or more: Loates-lane, Rickmansworth-road etc.

The newspaper’s approach evolved over the years. Hard news would appear on certain pages; the comment pieces would give a clear indication of what was regarded as the big story of the week, and various regions, such as Rickmansworth and Chorleywood, would have individual sections in pages.

The format, as I say, evolved and often changed from decade to decade, so it would take the research of one year of files, to get acquainted with the approach and rhythm of coverage for that particular decade.

I would trawl through the files with a lap-top to hand. Each item that caught my eye, I would type in under different headings: transport, calamity, news, health, education etc. My note-taking would concentrate on the factual aspects, because I am blessed with a good memory and could easily recall the aura and ‘feel’ of individual items, after a period of intensive research into a decade.

The notes would serve as a trigger. Eventually I would find myself with ten years of notes, and, thanks to the advent of computers, I would cut and paste all the transport notes together and on through the chapters: health, sport, education etc.

There was also a fail-safe, in that at the end of each year or on occasions at the beginning of the next, the journalists from yesteryear would include a retrospect, which I would reach upon completing a year from the files.

That way I could check if all the major events were now registered in my lap-top. After completing the research into the files, I would print out the various notes under their chapter headings and take them home to check through. That would provide the basics.

Next stop would be the libraries. A look through the rival publication, the West Herts Post, to check if there had been any item or exclusive that had escaped my own newspaper.

Each decade threw up something different and these inevitably prompted visits to the Hertfordshire Record Office and telephone calls to the growing list of people “who were there at the time”. Then, tackling one chapter at a time, the whole decade took shape.

Inevitably I had more words in cryptic note form than could be published in the space allotted for the supplements, so I devised ways to include more facts, such as listing those things that were pulled down, practices that were abandoned and people of significance that had died, under the heading: “We said goodbye to...”

Then came the photographs, sourced with the help of Andrew Lewis and later Mary Forsyth, plus my own researches in the libraries of Chorleywood, Rickmansworth, Kings Langley, Bushey, Abbots Langley, Harefield, Hemel Hempstead and the County Record Office.

I would then write the chapters, one at a time, knowing the amount of words to which each would be restricted. That all too familiar facet of a journalist’s discipline became easier as we moved on or about the century.

A by-product of the experience was that it accelerated my passion for old photographs. Another was that I found myself being described as a local historian, an accolade I found discomfortingly pretentious.

However, looking at other books on the locality, I did concede I had joined the ranks of “gatherers of local history”, such as Bob Nunn, and there are a number of them, and hopefully we have all contributed in our own way to the recording of the locality’s yesteryear.

What I would acknowledge is that the series of books, of which we have now published two, are the most detailed recording of the events in and the evolvement of south west Herts, during the 20th Century, hitherto attempted. Details of the book, covering 1939-59, appear on this website.