In an age of digital this and internet that, John has shifted more copies of his summary of the Suez crisis, and the campaign to secure a long-overdue campaign medal for all those British servicemen caught up in it, than he ever dreamed of...

Simply by engaging the attention of provincial papers up and down the land and politely pestering them to give him a few column inches in their "Letters to the Editor" pages.

And it all started in home town Preston, with the Lancashire Evening Post.

Publication of The Hidden Truths, and the eventual success of a
campaign to win recognition for thousands of Suez veterans, has been well-documented by this newspaper and others.

John Hunt was there, recalls the full horrors of life in Egypt at that time and was very much part of the fight against those in the
Establishment who somehow

believed service at Suez didn't count -unlike every other single conflict since 1945.

What few people know, though, is the manner in which retired salesman John managed to rescue a self-publishing enterprise which looked very much like offloading just l00 copies, and turn it into a success which has snowballed to 8,500 and still counting.

When he completed The Hidden Truths, he approached a number of publishers with a confidence which quickly evaporated when they told him they would want up to £6,000 for taking on the job.

Luckily, a printer in Bamber Bridge, just down the road from John's Clayton Brook home came up with an offer that was more in his price range – £150 in exchange for printing 50 copies. Hang the
expense, he thought, and ordered 100.

With friends and relatives doing their duty, and a few old soldiers
belonging to organisations like the Suez Veterans Association showing loyalty to an old colleague by stumping up the required £6, he managed to get rid of them.

" So I ordered another 50, but only managed to sell one or two more," he says. "It was hardly Harry Potter."

Then came the brainwave. Recalling how the LEP had been generous in its coverage of the medal campaign, John wrote a letter to the editor telling readers about the book, and we printed it.

Suddenly, the phone started ringing, and the postman began beating a path to his door.

Other local papers did the same. Then John went to Clayton Green library and began trawling the A to Z of every local newspaper in Britain and sending them letters for publication. It wasn't long before a man from Ayrshire was ordering his copy.

"All of a sudden, requests started flooding in. If a paper didn't print my letter, I'd leave it a while and write again. Most of them have obliged – and I'm still going to the library every week for more
addresses."

He wrote three times to a paper in Devon and reckons to have secured 70 or 80 orders: "When we got back from holiday two or three weeks ago there were loads of letters

behind the door from that neck of the woods. And they tell their friends, so word gets round.

"There must have been 80,000 men in Suez overall, so the market is huge, even now. And people with a general interest in military history seem to like it too."

He enjoyed sparring with Saga Magazine, which did not initially share the enthusiasm of so many local journalists.

The folk who run the glossy for older people, replied to John's
initial bid for a little publicity by saying if they did it for him, they would have to do it for every budding author:"So I wrote again saying 'let me be the first', then I sent off a third letter. By that time they must have decided that the only way to get rid of this pest was to print something.

"I've sold over 500 copies to Saga Magazine readers… and I'm a
subscriber now so they got something out of it."

He owes his tenacity, he reckons, to a working life in sales with food companies like Brooke Bond Oxo. After an elementary education in Frenchwood, which saw him leave school at 14, his father was not best pleased that he'd given up the white-collar job he hated at Ribble Motors to go hawking everything from corned beef to cling peaches round Barrow in Furness and the Lake District: "But I did OK," he smiles.
The father of three grown up children, and happily married to second wife Sheila, John Hunt has now sold copies of his book as far afield as Australia and Canada.

Lots of readers have sent him glowing reviews as well. "JM," of London, perhaps sums it up: "How much I enjoyed reading your book," he wrote. "It all brings back so many memories, not only of the Canal Zone but also of the long campaign for the medal."

In the end, the book which looked like being an unwise indulgence has instead enabled its author to make a donation to St Catherine's Hospice.
John keeps going back to the printers for more, and hopes to keep doing so until perhaps 10 to12,000 have been snapped up: "And that's ten to twelve thousand more than I looked like selling at one stage," he laughs.

Mind you, the publicity campaign hasn't always run smoothly: "I was due to go on Granada TV," he recalls, "then Michael Owen got sold to Newcastle, so most of the programme was taken up with that and I got cancelled.

"Still, you can't have everything."

*Rising costs mean John Hunt's book is now £7 including postage.

If you want a copy, ring him on 01772 322717 or write to him at 14
Carrfield, Bamber Bridge, Preston PR5 8BS.