The Shell Guide for Northumberland and Durham was published, including Sharp's strongly critical and political views of conditions on the Durham coalfield, in 1937. When it re-emerged in 1952 Durham had disappeared; the guide now concentrated on the more obviously picturesque northern county. It was, in effect, a whole new book, with much of the Northumberland material rewritten and extended and with many new illustrations (Sharp described the research for the book as pleasant 'hack-work', Chronicles of Failure, p.261). Many of the gazetteer entries were expanded; some, such as Blanchland, a particular favourite village of Sharp's, significantly so. Fifteen years after the previous volume Sharp commented much more on the development of forestry in the north west of the county, and on his own newly planned villages for the Forestry Commission. Though as a whole it was much more of a conventional guidebook than the previous volume, Sharp still retained some acerbic comments. For example, of one border crossing he noted that it is 'only marked by an advertisement sign for a department store (at which at least one indignant Englishman throws the largest stone he can find every time he sees it)' (p.22) and, in his gazetteer entry for the village of Elsdon, 'Some blind man has planted a line of trees alongside the road across the green, but fortunately most of them are dying' (p.34-35).