Hingston Publishing Co.

Our Story

Peter Hingston has been in business for several decades, starting and running five businesses in very different sectors (modifying cars, electronics manufacturing, clothing retail, national trade magazines and book publishing), the last three businesses with his wife, Charlotte. All traded profitably and the first four were sold in due course. The pair still run their Hingston Publishing business today. Peter has also been a non-executive director of a small chain of gift shops, and for two very interesting years was an official small business advisor to over 1,000 people wishing to start their own business.

Peter Hingston - Hingston Publishing Co
Peter Hingston in WW2 American soldier guise
Peter Hingston - Hingston Publishing Co
Hingston Publishing Co
The business advisor role gave rise to Peter’s first trio of books, designed and published in-house. They were an unexpected success. The first, “The Greatest Little Business Book” became a bestseller, and ran to 10 editions. The three books were appreciated for their clear, no-waffle, practical advice, far from the usual academic treatises. In due course Dorling Kindersley (Penguin) asked him to write three how-to small business titles which sold in many languages.

Three decades ago, Peter Hingston brought the same fresh and clear approach to a trio of accounts books for small businesses, de-mystifying and de-stressing book-keeping for what is already a whole generation of business people. For years, the books sold widely through WH Smith and Ryman the Stationers, but today he chooses to sell them online and by mail order only.

Peter Hingston has also been involved with or produced two cookbooks, a book on the English Lake District, a guide to Barbados, a 400-illustration book about his artist mother-in law Jill Walker, and a phenomenally detailed guide to buying classic British sports cars. To date some ¾ million of these very different books have been sold. More recently Peter, who is ex-military, turned his attention to researching a World War 2 story.

Hingston Publishing Co
Hingston Publishing Co
Hingston Publishing Co
"Charlotte’s ancestors (the 3 on the left) at Tugnet on the Spey in the late 1890s."
Charlotte Hingston was critical to three of the books with a Barbados connection. Her creativity and art training has been invaluable to the design and layout of all of the books. Presently she is working on a detailed historic account of net salmon fishing on the River Spey and discovering many fascinating stories about it.