David & Charles Ltd is an English publishing company. It is the owner of the David & Charles imprint, which specialises in craft and lifestyle publishing. David and Charles Ltd acts as distributor for all David and Charles Ltd books and content outside North America, and also distributes Interweave Press publications in the UK and worldwide excluding North America, and as foreign language editions. The company distributes Dover Publications and Reader's Digest books into the UK Trade and is also a UK and Europe distribution platform for the overseas acquired companies Krause Publications and Adams Media. History The current company was founded in 2019, taking the original founding name of the business that was first established in 1960. The company is the UK distributor for Dover Publications. David and Charles was first founded in Newton Abbot, England, on 1 April 1960 by David St John Thomas and Charles Hadfield. It made its name publishing titles on Britain's canals and railways. The company's first employees worked from a hut in David St John Thomas' garden. As the business expanded the company relocated to the Newton Abbot railway station building, eventually taking over the locomotive shed for use as a warehouse. From 1965 to 1970 David & Charles had an extensive list of books published with the American imprint Augustus M. Kelley. These books were usually almost identical to the United Kingdom product but with changed dust jacket and publisher's information. In 1971, the company bought Readers' Union, a group of book clubs catering to enthusiasts of needlecraft, handicrafts, gardening, equestrian pursuits and photography. The company's publishing programme began to reflect these subject areas, moving away from the traditional transport titles for which it had become known. Membership of the book clubs peaked at 268,000 members in 1992. The company was sold to Reader's Digest in 1990 before a subsequent management buy-out in 1997. In 2000, the company was bought by American company F+W Publications, which later became F+W Media. The growth of internet retailing led to the closure of the Readers' Union book clubs in 2008, which were replaced with the ecommerce business RUCraft. RUCraft rebranded to become Stitch Craft Create in January 2013. The company was rebranded to become F&W Media International in 2010. It continued to publish new books under the David and Charles imprint, focusing entirely on craft and lifestyle categories. In October 2013, the company launched a