Jude Brosnan

Out of this World Gifts

The Illuminates cover everything in the cosmos, from stars and planets to the exploration of space. Written by astronomers and scientists who work at the iconic Royal Observatory Greenwich – big concepts are explained in bite-sized formats, so they’re a perfect gift for armchair astronomers.

Titles in this series are The Sun, Planets, Black Holes, Stars and Space Exploration. All are available for £9.99.

Muslim Europe in Five Sites

In his 2021 bestselling book, Minarets in the Mountains: a Journey into Muslim Europe, author Tharik Hussain tells the story of Europe’s living indigenous Muslim communities in countries like Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Albania and Montenegro, where they have been living for almost six centuries. Yet the story of Muslim Europe is actually as old as Islam itself. These five places of European Muslim heritage reveal the continent’s fourteen centuries of Islamic presence.

Map of the Month: Antarctica and the Arctic BAS

We thought we’d end the year with something new, so from now on we will be having a Map of the Month. Stanfords Map of the Month for December 2021 is the British Antarctic Survey’s Antarctica and the Arctic double-sided folded map.

Here’s Laura Gerrish, GIS and Mapping Specialist at British Antarctic Survey to tell us a bit more about this map:

Children’s Book of the Month: The Lights that Dance in the Night

The Stanfords Children’s Book of the Month for December 2021 is The Lights that Dance in the Night by Yuval Zommer.

A magical, lyrical ode to the soul-stirring beauty of the northern lights, and to the landscape and animals of the Arctic.

Book of the Month: Brilliant Maps

Stanfords Book of the Month for December 2021 is Brilliant Maps: An Atlas for Curious Minds by Ian Wright, illustrated by Infographic.ly with a foreword by Tim Harford.

See the world anew with this unique and beautifully designed infographic atlas.

Which nations have North Korean embassies? Which region has the highest number of death metal bands per capita? How many countries have bigger economies than California? Who drives on the ‘wrong’ side of the road? And where can you find lions in the wild?

AmazingWorld Children’s Maps

The latest addition to our map department are these seven new AmazingWorld children’s A2 wall maps.

These lovingly crafted maps introduce little ones to the many wonders awaiting them around the world. Spark up conversations and fuel their curiosity to guide them as they discover more about the animals, foods, people, places, cultures, and plants across the globe.

Build their knowledge and develop an understanding of the similarities and differences that connect them to people & places around the world.

Happy 90th Birthday Dervla Murphy

The award winning travel writer Dervla Murphy turns 90 on Sunday 28th November. Stanfords wishes her a very happy birthday.

Irish Examiner News Picture 01-10-2011 Saturday Social Page. Travel writer Dervla Murphy at her home in Lismore, Co Waterford. Picture: Dan Linehan

Dervla Murphy has won worldwide praise for her writing and has been described as a ‘travel legend’ and ‘the First Lady of Irish cycling’. In March she joined Bill Bryson, Michael Palin, Jan Morris, Colin Thubron and Paul Theroux and became a recipient of the Edward Stanford Award for Outstanding Contribution to Travel Writing.

Atlas of Forgotten Places

Travis Elborough, winner of the 2020 Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards Illustrated Book of the Year, is back with another book in the Unexpected Atlas series.

Atlas of Forgotten Places takes us to the places that time forgot. Abandoned, mysterious, sleeping monuments around the world have been relegated to the margins of history, pushed off the map and out of sight.

From ancient ruins and crumbling castles to more recent relics – an art deco New York subway station, a Soviet ghost town in the Arctic Circle, a flooded Thai mall teeming with aquatic life.

Original maps and stunning colour photography accompany Travis Elborough’s moving historic and geographic accounts of each site. The featured locations are a stark reminder of what was, and the accounts in this investigative book help to bring their stories back to life, telling us what happened, when and why, and to whom.

Here Travis Elborough introduces Atlas of Forgotten Places:

Gift Guide: Fun with Flags

As well as stocking maps, guides and books about different countries, we also have a wide selection of flags in different sizes. If you are looking for the flag of a particular country, please get in touch.

If you are in search of some fun with flags, here are some great gifts for vexophiles:

Routemasters of the Universe By Harry Rosehill

The last Routemaster to ply a proper London bus route retired in 2005. But over 15 years later, this indestructible bus still pops up everywhere. It’s just that nowadays merely in London Routemasters are wedding buses, Ghost Buses, afternoon tea buses, mobile yoghurt stalls on the South Bank… And elsewhere, all over the world, they have found new homes and been put to the most unlikely but serendipitous uses.

In Routemasters of the Universe Harry Rosehill catalogues all the possible uses of a Routemaster bus, from a tea room in Essex to a posh B&B in County Durham, a promotional bus for a theatre company in Moscow to an office in Bermuda, not to mention making history during the Iraq War as a Human Shield in Baghdad. Along the way he explains how Routemasters were built to last so long, why they’ve become so cherished, and where you get a spare big end for a 70-year-old commercial vehicle.

Here Harry Rosehill explains how he, a proud bus nerd, came to write this alternative history of a true London icon: