Robert (Bob) Malster trained as a journalist with the Lowestoft Journal, experiencing at first hand the final years of the autumn herring fishing. His first book, Wreck and Rescue on the Essex Coast was followed by Wherries and Waterways, Saved from the Sea and a number of other books on local and maritime history. Among them are A History of Ipswich , written to mark the 800th anniversary of the granting of a charter to the town by King John, and The Norfolk and Suffolk Broads, which appeared just 100 years after W.A. Dutt’s celebrated work on the same subject.
He founded Malthouse Press and, as general editor, he edited more than fifty books by other authors before embarking on a series on the maritime history of the East Anglian counties for Poppyland Publishing as well as North Sea War 1914-1919. Maritime Norfolk Part One, Maritime Norfolk Part Two and Maritime Suffolk are exemplary works, two out of the three being shortlisted in the History and Tradition category of the East Anglian Book Awards. In recent years he wrote the Poppyland booklet, Broadland, and had just completed a new work, The Industrial History of the Eastern Counties, yet to be published.
Robert Malster passed away on 16th April 2023, aged 90.
