Extract – Stanfords Blog

A Childhood Memory of Place in ‘My Family and Other Rock Stars’

-Guest post by Tiffany Murray, author of My Family and Other Rock Stars.

‘Rockfield Studios is a farm with rock ’n’ roll and my mother is the cordon bleu chef. In the Quadrangle’s blue kitchen, she plays ‘That Ain’t the Way to Behave’ by Dr Feelgood, and ‘How Long’ by Ace, because she fed these songs. In our chalet (which she calls a converted stable) she keeps live shellfish in the bath, and they spit at me when I’m on the loo. Rockfield Studios is a kingdom of fields all the way to Monmouth. There are horses and cows and sheep, echo chambers and control rooms at Rockfield. Managers and record labels call the two studios ‘the Quadrangle’ and ‘the Coach House’, but we say, ‘Studio One’ and ‘Studio Two’. Nick Lowe and Dave Edmunds walk the tracks as big trucks filled with instruments and amps turn in the yard, and even though the Old Mill is a drive away, when the wind blows, I’m sure I can hear Black Sabbath rehearse. At Rockfield my night sounds are back: the dof-da—da, doof-da-da of drums, the high whine of electric guitar.

Mum and I are safe here; even if Hawkwind throw open the double doors of the studio in the middle of the night and wake me with ‘The Wizard Blew His Horn’.

It’s my lullaby.’

Extract- Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian’s Country Diary, 2018-2024

Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian’s Country Diary, 2018-2024 takes us on a beautiful journey through the British countryside, drawn from The Guardian’s beloved Country Diary. With an introduction by Ian McMillan, and illustrations by Clifford Harper.

For over a century, The Guardian’s Country Diary has published the nation’s most celebrated writers of natural history as they capture the essence of the British countryside.

From Yorkshire to Belfast, Orkney to Cumbria, and Gwynedd to the Scottish Highlands, exquisitely written and softly observed snapshots emerge – of fishes lurking in dusky pools, of age-old trees beneath deep blue skies, of lives being lived alongside the ebbs and flows of the natural world.

Bringing together the finest contributions to the column from recent years, Under the Changing Skies is an essential companion for all those with a deep love for the British countryside, charting its subtle changes over the course of the seasons.

With contributions from Cal Flyn, Mark Cocker, Josie George, Nicola Chester, Lev Parikian, Amy-Jane Beer, Kate Bradbury, Andrea Meanwell and many others.

Here is an extract:

Extract: Infinite Life by Jules Howard

In Infinite Life: Revolutionary Story of Eggs, Evolution and Life on Earth, zoology correspondent Jules Howard takes the reader on a mind-bending journey from the churning coastlines of the Cambrian Period and Carboniferous coal forests, where insects were stirring, to the end of the age of dinosaurs when live-birthing mammals began their modern rise to power. Eggs would evolve from out of the sea; be set by animals into soils, sands, canyons and mudflats; be dropped in nests wrapped in silk; hung in stick nests in trees, covered in crystallised shells or secured by placentas.

Here is an extract:

Extract: Running on Empty by Guy Deacon

At the age of sixty, and having lived with Parkinson’s disease for over ten years, Guy Deacon CBE set out on one last adventure: to drive solo from his home in the UK 18,000 miles and through twenty-five countries to Cape Town on the southern tip of Africa. Running on Empty is the story of this incredible journey, across Europe and down the full length of Africa, took the former British Army officer over twelve months. Along the way, he broke down five times, underwent one emergency evacuation, and took 3,650 prescription pills.

There are only a handful of vehicles each year which attempt this difficult journey; many never complete it. Ongoing conflicts in Libya, South Sudan, Mozambique and many other countries make any journey exceptionally dangerous. In central Africa, road conditions, particularly in the rainy season, often make the going treacherous.

Further hazards include illegal checkpoints, extortion, contaminated fuel and a lack of services. Guy drove, lived and slept in his VW Transporter, often in remote spots, hundreds of miles from the nearest village or town. Reliant on patchy GPS, he often got lost.

His journey was, quite simply, an incredible feat by a man travelling alone with Stage 3 Parkinson’s disease, when simply putting on a pair of shoes can take half an hour. But not only did Guy’s journey fulfil a childhood dream to drive the length of Africa, his mission was also to raise global awareness of Parkinson’s disease, for which there is currently still no cure.

Here is an extract:

Extract: The Rising Down: Lives in a Sussex Landscape by Alexandra Harris

When the celebrated critic and cultural historian Alexandra Harris returned to her childhood home of West Sussex, she realised that she barely knew the place at all.

As she probed beneath the surface, excavating layers of archival records and everyday objects – bringing a lifetime’s reading to bear on the place where she started – hundreds of unexpected stories and hypnotic voices emerged from the area’s past. Who has stood here, she asks; what did they see?

From the painter John Constable and the modernist writer Ford Madox Ford to the lost local women who left little trace, these electrifying encounters – spanning the Downs, Poland, Australia, Canada – inspired her to imagine lives that seemed distant, yet were deeply connected through their shared landscape.

By focusing on one small patch of England, Harris finds ‘a World in a Grain of Sand’ and opens vast new horizons.

Here is an extract:

Extract: Found in Translation

Our Book of the Month for December is Found in Translation: The Unexpected Origins of Place Names by Duncan Madden. This book unravels the tangled threads of history and etymology to uncover the strange, intriguing and enlightening stories that have shaped the names of countries and places around the world.

In this extract we look at the etymology behind ‘Argentina’:

The Challenger Expedition: Exploring the Ocean’s Depths by Dr Erika Jones

This article is an edited introduction from The Challenger Expedition: Exploring the Ocean’s Depths by Dr Erika Jones, Curator of Navigation at Royal Museums Greenwich.

The book was published to mark the 150th anniversary of the expedition’s launch.

On the 21 December 1872, HMS Challenger set sail from Portsmouth, England, to begin a global voyage of deep-sea exploration. A landmark endeavour, the findings and the legacy shaped the development of ocean science as we know it and are still influential in our understanding of the planet today.

With technological and scientific developments of the time, supported by extensive international cooperation and a team of research and naval officers, the expedition was part of the concerted nineteenth-century drive to map the ocean floors and search for life in the abyss.

When the ship returned to Britain in 1876, the scientific team on board had amassed the then largest collection of examples of life from the deep sea. Over the next two decades, a global network of researchers prepared the results for publication culminating in a series of works that is considered the intellectual foundation of modern oceanography.

HMS Challenger under sail passing ice bergs during the oceanographic expedition’s visit to Antarctica, attributed to William Frederick Mitchell, 1880
© National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London

Extract: Exploring The World by Alexander Maitland

Filled with epic tales of endurance and perseverance, Exploring The World: Two Centuries Of Remarkable Adventurers And Their Journeys by Alexander Maitland celebrates a group of exceptional individuals possessed of indomitable courage, boundless determination and adventurous spirit. It portrays a variety of fascinating lives driven by curiosity, wanderlust and the pursuit of knowledge – and, in doing so, provides a unique overview of two centuries of exploration. Here is an extract about one of the most well-known explorers, Sir Douglas Mawson.

Extract: Distant Melodies: Music in Search of Home by Edward Dusinberre

Edward Dusinberre, first violinist of the Takács Quartet, writes about playing Benjamin Britten’s last string quartet, a way to bridge distance during the COVID-19 pandemic. This excerpt is adapted from Dusinberre’s Distant Melodies: Music in Search of Home, published by Faber.

Tuning our instruments backstage, we miss the sounds of enthusiastic chatter before our concert in Grusin Music Hall on the University of Colorado’s Boulder campus. Our feet clatter over the wooden floor before we bow to the livestream camera. I imagine our friends listening over loudspeakers in their living rooms and my parents who will watch our performance the next day in Cambridge, in the same part of the world that Benjamin Britten’s String Quartet no. 3, Opus 94 was largely composed. The menthol drop I slip into my mouth underneath my mask adds an extra sting to the hot breath that fogs my glasses. When we start to play, the facial clues that we usually rely on to communicate changes of character are hidden. From the sparkle in violist Richard O’Neill’s eyes I can imagine his smile. Our cellist, András Féjer sometimes raises his eyebrows sceptically against the dubious rhythmic instincts of a first violinist – now they seem manically animated.

Extract: My Family and Other Enemies

My Family and Other Enemies is part travelogue, part memoir that dives into the hinterland of Croatia. Mary Novakovich explores her ongoing relationship with the region of Lika in central Croatia, where her parents were born. In recounting her own family’s tumultuous history, Novakovich opens up a world that is little known outside the Balkans, telling the stories of people whose experiences weren’t widely reported at the time, when the devastation in Croatia was superseded by the Bosnian conflict and media attention moved elsewhere.

Here is an extract: