The Buckinghamshire town of High Wycombe, or simply Wycombe, has had a long and remarkable past: the Royal military academy was founded in the town in the late eighteenth century before moving to Sandhurst; Charles I passed through on his way to the scaffold in 1649; and Benjamin Disraeli, MP for the town between 1874 and 1880, made his first political speech from a portico in the high street. Nearby is the village of Penn, the ancestral home of William Penn, founder of the city of Philadelphia and from whom the state of Pennsylvania takes its name.

High Wycombe Through Time offers the reader a real insight into the life and times of this former furniture-making town and of the many changes that have taken place over the years.