TURNING every page of the West Somerset Free Press over the last 150 years to read the thousands of stories that have hit the headlines might seem an odd pastime.

But the author of a new book charting the history of the area through its best selling local newspaper had more reason than most to bury his head in its column inches.

Jeff Cox is the great great grandson of the printer Samuel Cox, who launched the Free Press in 1860, and the son of Norman Cox, the last of the family to edit it.

West Somerset In The News, which is published by Halsgrove at the end of May, is the result of more than two years of painstaking research - but more than anything, it is a labour of love.

Jeff, who has been a journalist all his life, spent the breaks between university terms in the early 1970s helping out on the paper.

His father had died in 1970 and the editorship had passed out of the family for the first time to veteran renowned journalist Jack Hurley, who started and ended his career on the paper.

After almost three years under his belt on the Western Mail in Cardiff, Jeff returned to the Free Press at the end of 1976 as sports editor, distribution manager and chairman of directors.

But as the end of the decade loomed and the computer age beckoned, he realised his family inheritance was facing a dilemma.

"It was the classic case of a small family company needing some serious investment," said Jeff.

"The family resources were not enough to do what needed to be done."

With hot metal production needing to give way to computerisation, the family took the decision to sell, ending its 120-year link with the paper.

But the priority was to find a buyer who cared about the Free Press traditions and believed in its future.

The new owner, the Tindle Newspapers Group, is headed by Sir Ray Tindle, who bought his first newspaper with his £250 demob payment following wartime service and now has more than 200 titles to his name - many more than 100 years old.

And in Jeff's eyes, the Free Press has been in safe hands for the past 30 years.

"We wanted to find someone who really cared for the concept of a local paper, for its history and traditions, not someone who would close it down just to make a fast buck," he said.

"It was incredibly sad selling off the family heritage but I believe it secured the Free Press's future."

Despite severing the formal link, Jeff's fondness for the paper has endured.

And he jumped at the chance to mark its 150th anniversary this year by capturing some of the events and characters that have shaped the district in a different print form.

The task has not been without its challenges, particularly as it was one he undertook while also holding down a full-time job specialising in the coverage of foreign news for the BBC's television and radio news bulletins.

"I have read every single edition of the Free Press," he confessed.

"It would have been easy just to have headed for the well-known stories, but that would have been the lazy way to approach this - and I would never have come across the stories that even I had never heard of before."

So although West Somerset In The News covers the big developments of the time, such as the arrival of the railway, the Lynmouth flood disaster, the battle to preserve Exmoor and the construction of the first Hinkley Point nuclear power station, it also reveals fresh details about some of the lesser known events.

Readers will be able to find out how Mrs Pankhurst and her 'Votes for Women' campaign swept into West Somerset in 1911, how the world waited to see how the district would vote on the best way to confront Hitler and, of course, the Free Press exclusive on the Norman Scott case, which led to former Liberal Party leader Jeremy Thorpe appearing in a Minehead court charged with conspiracy to murder.

But Jeff admits that the finished product - 160 pages and more than 250 photographs, authentic extracts and illustrations - is not "an organ of record".

"It is a journalist picking out what he thinks is interesting, stories that tell something about the social development of the area and the characters that shaped it," he said.

"The research has dug up some fabulous tales. It has provided a new insight into some of the stories that we already knew about and colour to those that had been hidden.

"It's been a real privilege and honour to go through the pages of the Free Press.

"It shows the crucial importance of a local newspaper, wherever it is in the country.

"It would be very easy to write them off as just local rags but they provide the only permanent record of the development of their communities.

"At the time when the internet is undermining the economy of every newspaper in the country, their value has never been more crucial.

"The Free Press has been a lifelong personal passion of mine, given the family link and given that I am a journalist.

"This book has been an absolutely fabulous journey which has opened my eyes again to West Somerset and the marvellous and interesting part of the world that it is."

Our selection of pictures offers just a taste of the photographs and advertisements featured in the new book.

'West Somerset in The News' is published by Halsgrove and will be available at the end of May.

To guarantee a copy at £19.99 (plus postage), delivered direct to your home, you will find an order form in next week's Free Press (Friday April 23).