Christopher Stocks is an author, journalist and trainee bell-ringer. His first book, Forgotten Fruits, a social history of British fruit and vegetables, became an unlikely success, with Monty Don choosing it as his favourite book of the year. Angie Lewin studied fine art at the Central School of Art and has become a highly regarded artist and printmaker.

• Foreword by Angie Lewin • 1. On Chesil Beach • 2. Sir Mortimer at War • 3. Picasso’s Pebbles • 4. Jim Ede and the Louvre of the Pebble • 5. Basically Derek • 6. Eminent Victorians • 7. At the Natural History Museum • 8. No Stone Unturned • 9. Some Pebbles • 10. Some Beaches • Afterword

'As someone who lives on Chesil Beach – perhaps the most famous shingle beach in the UK – Christopher Stocks is uniquely well-placed to talk about the visceral appeal of pebbles: the sounds they make as they are ground together by the waves and their physical properties – their “weight and heft, their smooth shapes seeming almost designed to be held in the hand”.' - The Scotsman