Our Map of the Month for June 2022 is the Earth Wall Map by CartDeco.
This map has been five years in the making, going through many iterations and checks to make this one of the finest map of our planet on the market. The details have been meticulously checked with an emphasis on including indigenous place names where appropriate, in particular in Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Continue reading Map of the Month: CartDeco Earth MapOur Children’s Book of the Month for June 2022 is Martha Maps It Out by Leigh Hodgkinson.
Martha LOVES drawing maps. She creates maps of everything-even her thoughts and dreams! Let Martha be your guide as she welcomes you to her world. Starting in outer space, we zoom in page by page, to our planet, Martha’s community, and beyond to her dreams of a future where ANYTHING is possible. Full of quirky details and fun non-fiction labels that children will love poring over-they will discover cool new facts with every reading. Each map is imbued with an irresistible sense of excitement about the world and optimism for the future.
Our Book of the Month for June 2022 is Where the Wildflowers Grow: My Journey Through Botanical Britain by Leif Bersweden.
‘When was the last time you stopped and noticed a wild plant?’
An intriguing and timely exploration of the importance of Britain and Ireland’s plant life.
Leif Bersweden has always been fascinated by plants. From a young age, his afternoons were spent hunting for and cataloguing the plants in his local area. But it is a landscape that is fast disappearing.
Since the end of the Second World War, 97% of Britain’s wildflower meadows have disappeared. Climate change, habitat destruction and a declining pollinator population mean that the future for plant life looks bleaker than ever before. Many of us are also unable to identify, or even notice, the plants that grow around us.
At the Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards in March we awarded Hilary Bradt with the Outstanding Contribution to Travel Writing Award. The previous year’s recipient of this award, Dervla Murphy, sent this message to Hilary from her home in Ireland for us to read out at the awards;
“When we first met in an Andean hut in 1979 I had one of those instant reactions- a kindred spirit. During the subsequent decades Hilary, as both a traveller and writer, has provided invaluable guidance and encouragement to generations of young travellers uninterested in beaten tracks. Congratulations of your award Hilary.”
Here Hilary Bradt pays tribute to a great travel writer and a special friend for 40 years.
-by Hilary Bradt
On May 5 I received an email from Dervla’s friend and PR, Steph Allen, with this message: “I’ve just spoken to Dervla who is not at all well. She has heart failure and believes that she is (in her own words) on her way out. I asked if there was anyone she’d like me to let know and she asked if I could send you a message to say thank you for everything you have done for her over the years”. This unwarranted thoughtfulness and generosity personifies this extraordinary woman who died on May 22, and who I first met in 1979 in an Ecuadorian hostal (the sort with no hot water, $3 a night, with rooms clustered around a courtyard). She was returning from Peru, which would (eventually) result in Eight Feet in the Andes and George and I were researching our guide to Backpacking in Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador – the third in our fledgling backpacking series. I, like so many other young travellers, had been inspired by Dervla’s early books, in my case Full Tilt and In Ethiopia with a Mule, and was awe-struck to meet such a famous writer. The awe was diluted by a shared bottle of local rum, but the admiration grew steadily throughout our 44-year friendship.
Continue reading Remembering Dervla Murphy-by Megan Barford, Curator of Cartography at Royal Museums Greenwich and author of A is for Atlas: Wonders of Maps and Mapping.
As a map curator, I often get asked about my favourite map and it’s terribly difficult to choose. In the collection of Royal Museums Greenwich there are near-pristine sixteenth-century maps illuminated with gold and maps reduced to scraps through use at sea. There are maps that show the involvement of women in the book and print trades in eighteenth-century London, alongside maps that came out of trade union activity during the Second World War. Luckily, in my new book, A is for Atlas, I’ve been able to pick 104 favourites, organised according to alphabetical themes in a treasury of stories about map making and use, and about materials and techniques, from the thirteenth century to the present day. Here, D is for display, E is for Engraving, F is for Fake. Together the themes help us to interrogate maps and mapping in different ways, and understand the rich human stories that can be found throughout the collection of Royal Museums Greenwich.
Continue reading A is for Atlas by Megan BarfordAn extract from Soundings: Journeys in the Company of Whales by Doreen Cunningham.
Travelling the grey whale highway
The train ride is a beauty. We shoot out of the station in our capsule, in glorious limbo, past the Wun Fun meat company buildings and a viaduct. Max and I stare out the window, transfixed. Muddy brown snake of river and yellow conveyor- belt- plant flash past. Glittering heaps and in the distance mountains. I can feel the landscape filling my head. This is how my heart is furnished, like the view from a train. I like to be totally occupied in the immediate. And am always, always, longing for something in the distance.
Continue reading An Extract from SoundingsKaren Romano Young, author of our Children’s Book of the Month for May Antarctica: The Melting Continent describes some of the tech used in this far away part of the globe.
Going into “the field” — on adventures in nature — with scientists has introduced me to some of the incredible machines they’re using to find new data and make discoveries about Antarctica. Would you like to meet a small sampling?
Continue reading Antarc-TECH-a!
-by Owen Hatherley
One of the things you learn compiling a guide to the best modern buildings in the country is that there are surprisingly few in Central London. This is ironic, because the capital dominates modern architecture in the UK, much more than it ought to – but planning regulations and widespread conservation have kept much of it outside of Westminster, and the area around it, in particular. But there are five buildings in a very short walking distance from Stanford’s where you can get some sense of what modernism in Britain is all about – its stylistic diversity, its long history, and the different ways it has adapted – or hasn’t – to historic context.
Continue reading 5 Modernist Buildings Near StanfordsOur Map of the Month for May 2022 is the NC500 Collins Pocket Map. This fold out map of the hugely popular North Coast 500 is a NEW edition from Collins Maps.
The North Coast 500 is a scenic route around the north coast of Scotland that was launched in March 2015 by the Tourism Project Board of the North Highland Initiative. Linking many must see features in the north Highlands of Scotland in one touring route, It is commonly known as Scotland’s Route 66 and regularly features in lists of best drives in the world.
Continue reading Map of the Month: NC500 Collins Pocket MapOur Children’s Book of the Month for May 2022 is Antarctica: The Melting Continent by Karen Romano Young, Angela Hsieh.
Antarctica – vast, cold and mysterious. This frozen continent is full of incredible stories. Here you can discover incredible wildlife, awe-inspiring landscapes and adventurous scientists and explorers.
Join author Karen Romano Young on a trip across Antarctica, hanging out with people and animals and learning about how this special place is changing, and what it means for our planet. Hang out with some of the coolest creatures on earth above and below the ice as you meet emperor penguins, killer whales and elephant seals. Explore some of the harshest landscapes on earth following in the footsteps of brave explorers. And learn about how scientists survive here today and what they do all day – from studying climate change to investigating ice cores to learn about the history – and future – of our planet.
Continue reading Children’s Book of the Month: Antarctica
