Conway Publishing, formerly Conway Maritime Press, is an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing. It is best known for its publications dealing with nautical subjects.
History
Conway Maritime Press was founded in 1972 as an independent publisher. Its origins lay in catering for a specialised readership, publishing quarterly journals such as Model Shipwright and Warship, which would subsequently evolve into the popular annuals still existent today. These, along with the long-running Anatomy of the Ship series, published in conjunction with the Naval Institute Press in the United States, have become stalwarts of the Conway catalogue. Over its history, it has built an extensive catalogue of books specialising in maritime heritage, ship design and construction, and naval military history, from authoritative figures such as Brian Lavery, 'one of the best naval historians in Britain, if not the world,' according to BBC History Magazine. Nautical Magazine wrote, of Richard Endsor's Restoration Warship, 'From the dust cover into the book and right the way through it, this is a magnificent publication with a tremendous amount of detail.'
Conway Publishing
In 2005 Anova Books bought Conway Maritime Press. Around this time the publisher was renamed Conway Publishing. Whilst still committed to producing specialist maritime books, Conway broadened their catalogue to incorporate general, military and aviation history, exploration, as well as railway and scale modelling, amongst other related topics. In recent years, Conway has found success with several television series tie-ins. In line with the current heritage culture espoused by television shows such as BBC's Who Do You Think You Are? and coordinating with several recent international anniversaries, Conway released a series of popular nostalgic reproduction wartime pocket-books ranging from officers' manuals, the Spitfire, to the Home Guard. Conway has also produced the books to accompany James May's Toy Stories and the Dan Snow-presented Empire of the Seas, both aired on the BBC. The latter book, written by Brian Lavery, would become a No. 2 Sunday Times Bestseller. In April 2010, Conway attained the book rights to Bruce Parry's Arctic adventure, broadcast on BBC2 later in the year. In September 2014 Bloomsbury Publishing bought Conway from Anova to join its existing Adlard Coles Nautical imprint.
