Pandamania

Today was exciting because the first copy of our new title Panda: Back From the Brink rolled off the presses. We’ve been looking forward to this for quite some time! The fantastic, rare photographs of dedicated panda expert Zhou Mengqi, the giant panda’s leading photographer, are a sight to behold.

Cover of Panda: Back from the Brink

Preparations for the new arrivals at Edinburgh Zoo are now in the final stages. Tian Tian (‘Sweetie’) and Yang Guang (‘Sunshine’) will each have their own space at the zoo, carefully designed to replicate the habitat they would enjoy in the wild. They will be housed in enclosures with bulletproof-glass viewing windows so that we will be able to see them going about their daily routine – of eating, eating, sleeping, and more eating.

Elaborate plans have been laid for the constant supply of bamboo, even in difficult circumstances, such as the total shutdown of the roads system that hit Scotland’s Central Belt last winter during a relentless blizzard. Even more elaborate plans are in place for the journey itself: it’s not the easiest of tasks transporting two large bears by plane on a long-haul journey!

The Royal Zoological Society of Scotland, the organisation that runs Edinburgh Zoo, now has a dedicated website for the pandas. Amongst the featured pages, the head keeper of the pandas, Alison, has been blogging from China as she gets to know her new charges. Alison will travel from China to Edinburgh with Tian Tian and Yang Guang. Funny, her last entry was about the rainy weather…. Home from home, perhaps?

Meanwhile, here are a couple of pages from the book, as a taster. Or, see the preview pages on our website, or else the video trailer on youtube. The book will be available very soon from the zoo and from your favourite bookshop, or else at online retailers. We would like to thank Sichuan Fine Art Publishing Co, Ltd and the RZSS for working with us to create this book.

panda_samplespread1

Pandas love climbing trees!

Animal Magic

It was tantalising to hear last week that Yang Guang (‘Sunshine’) and Tian Tian (‘Sweetie’) have moved into their quarantine cages as final preparations are made for their move to Edinburgh.

Senior staff members from the Edinburgh Zoo team have just returned from China, and in mid-October, Chinese officials will travel to Edinburgh to determine whether everything has been prepared to their satisfaction. If so, we’ll be seeing our new guests in November. That’s not long to wait!

Yesterday, on an unseasonally sunny, warm day, I was lucky enough to be at the zoo talking to some of the people involved (and sneaking a few minutes to watch the monkeys, who were swinging with abandon and seemed to be appreciating the weather almost as much as the humans). No doubt the temperatures will be chillier by the time Sunshine and Sweetie arrive, but it would take more than Scottish weather to dampen their reception. In fact, the climate will suit the pandas just fine. It’s not dissimilar to the prevailing climate of their own habitat in Sichuan.

Here’s a first glimpse of how we’re planning to celebrate this auspicious event. More details will be released shortly, but for now, suffice to say that this book will be both gorgeous – featuring stunning photos of pandas in the wild – and of course, conservation-focused.

Photo by Zhou Mengqi

PS: we’re not meant to say that pandas are cute, but sometimes you just can’t help it!

Blooming Jellyfish

Relatively neglected until recently, issues of marine conservation have been more widely discussed during the last few years. Hugh’s Fish Fight has helped bring the issue of overfishing to public attention; yet we’ve all known for many years about collapsing fish stocks, such as occurred in the once-teeming cod banks off Newfoundland, and we know that ocean temperatures and other environmental conditions have been changing – not to mention reports now widely circulated of horrendous marine litter, like the large drifts of plastic in mid-ocean.

But it’s easy to forget in our conservation-conscious world that not all species are threatened by changing conditions: some, by contrast, are thriving in places where they were once scarce, or even not found at all.

A recent BBC website article reported on a significant rise in jellyfish in UK waters this summer, as a result (maybe) of overfishing, pollution or climate change.

Whatever the cause, one of the species that is increasing in numbers is the lion’s mane jellyfish – the largest known jellyfish species, whose tentacles, with their potent (but not deadly) sting, can measure up to an incredible 36m (120 feet)! This colourful creature features on the front cover of our forthcoming marine conservation book, Beneath Cold Seas, by award-winning photographer David Hall.

Beneath Cold Seas book cover

To monitor these changes in our seas, the Marine Conservation Society is running a jellyfish survey and asks for the help of the public in identifying and recording the incidence of jellyfish species. An identification (and safety!) guide can be found here with the survey details.

So if you’re interested in helping keep an eye on the seas that surround us – it’s time to take to the water!

Winning Ways

Followers of our Twitter feed, facebook page or website will by now be well aware of our excitement at Wednesday’s announcement that Sara Allerton’s debut novel Making Shore has won the 2011 People’s Book Prize for fiction.

Making Shore

Inspired by the true-life experiences of 88-year-old former merchant seaman Brian Clarke, Making Shore has captured the imagination of an extraordinary range of readers, from literary fiction enthusiasts to fans of war stories, page-turning suspense thrillers, and romantic fiction. No one, it seems, can read it without shedding a tear: as Costa Awards judge Mark Thornton commented, ‘It packs an enormous emotional wallop’.

The awards were presented by patron and eminent novelist Frederick Forsyth at the home of the Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers, the historic heart (since the 16^th century) of London’s publishing industry. The oak-panelled Stationers Hall, rebuilt just after the Great Fire of London and situated near St Paul’s Cathedral, is laden with heraldic shields, symbols and portraits, and features stained glass windows depicting Caxton, Shakespeare and St Cecilia, the patron saint of music. It is not only a beautiful and lavishly adorned building, but a suitably grand and imposing setting for a literary occasion.

Stationers Hall - entrance

After a celebration dinner, opening speeches and an award for Special Achievement made to Libby Coleman and Nick Ainley for their work in promoting adult literacy, the top three from the twelve novelist finalists present were called to approach the podium. Sara waited on the stage with her two fellow contenders in a tense, Strictly-style countdown while Frederick Forsyth spoke about his own experiences and the importance of fostering new writing talent.

Waiting...

At last, the envelope was opened, and the awardwas announced. Sara, appearing somewhat stunned, quickly composed herself and made a very short and gracious speech, dedicating her award to Brian Clarke and thanking her publisher (thank you, in return, Sara!) She was congratulated by runner-up Lorraine Jenkin. Subsequently, environmental lawyer Polly Higgins was recognised for her ground-breaking Eradicating Ecocide, and Henry Fisher and Morag Ramsay received awards for a children’s book and as a first-time author, respectively. Founder Tatiana Wilson rounded off the proceedings with her own speech.

The winner!

All in all, a wonderful evening was had by all!

Making Shore is also available for Kindle (Amazon UK, Amazon USA)

Award winners - & founder Tatiana Wilson, centre

Celebrating the Hero

The most compelling of the archetypes, we all love a hero, though our definition of what makes one varies from the obvious military example to just about anyone who shows outstanding courage and fortitude in the face of adversity.

We are in a state of high excitement as our novel Making Shore enters the final phase of its (heroic) journey to the  2011 People’s Book Prize awards. Its protagonist is based on a real-life hero of World War II, former merchant seaman Brian Clarke, who at the grand age of 87 is thrilled to see his story told – albeit fictionalised so that his loyalty to fellow crew need not be compromised.

Brian Clarke

Brian’s extraordinary feat of endurance in the wake of a torpedo strike that left him adrift on a lifeboat in mid-Atlantic so inspired talented wordsmith Sara Allerton that she set about penning her debut novel, with his experiences at its heart. As a Quaker, the real-life 19-year-old Brian did not want to take up arms, yet felt compelled to contribute to the war effort. Quickly finding himself the rookie of an otherwise experienced crew, and in the face of disaster, he had to find not only a powerful survival instinct, but a stroke of ingenuity and a sustaining role model to see him through his ordeal. His (fictional) inspiration was his heroic friend, a tower of strength and wisdom who would become Brian’s touchstone whenever his own courage seemed about to fail him.

Sara’s exceptional debut has attracted not only enthusiastic reader reviews, but accolades from critics and commentators including Mark Thornton, judge for the Costa First Novel Award:

“It is based in part on a remarkable true story of survival at sea, and in that regard the writing is dignified yet compelling. Having survived the torpedoing of his boat during WWII, young wireless operator Cubby Clarke endures a terrible ordeal with other survivors from the boat, and even when they reach land, their ordeal is not over. But the reason for the power of this novel is its framing within a relationship between one of his shipmates and his fiancée, which packs an enormous emotional wallop and raises this far above a standard wartime survival story. The book deserves to reach a wide audience.”

Brian (Cubby) is forced to dig deep to find the resources to face his demons when he finally returns home. Perhaps it is his very naïveté and ordinary qualities that lead us to wonder how we ourselves would fare under such extreme circumstances. Could we survive, would we do the right thing? Or, put another way, do we have a hero inside? And what of role model Joe: was he right to put Brian to the test with his terrible dilemma? And Maggie – will she be destroyed or can she keep faith?

Making Shore is gripping. It deals with universal themes – truth and betrayal, courage and paralysing fear, loss and the powerful sea tides of love, both to redeem and devastate. Make sure you have a box of tissues handy: this novel has drawn tears from even hard-core stoics!

Sara Allerton

If you love this book as much as we do, please vote for it now in the public-judged People’s Book Prize, before 15^th July. Sara Allerton is also a deserving contender for the Beryl Bainbridge Award for a First-Time Author. Very best of luck, Sara! And thank you for elevating the concept of a hero to something so much more than the opposite of ‘zero’ – a crass media dichotomy Andy Murray faces yet again this week. (Good luck Andy, too!)

History Everywhere

The annals have been filling up with history before our very eyes during the last week or two, with the pageantry of the royal wedding, the dramatic death of Osama bin Laden, the conclusion of the 7/7 inquest, an electoral reform referendum, and a political landslide with long-term constitutional implications in Scotland. History overload! Even as we witness them, we are conscious that these events are being recorded and analysed for posterity.

I’ve been wrapped up in another sort of history this week, though – the sort that involves discovering hints of forgotten daily lives by means of a kind of assimilative detective process. On Thursday evening, living-history aficionado Fiona Houston gave a talk to members of the Bewick Society at Cherryburn, the Northumberland birthplace of the engraver Thomas Bewick. I went along to listen and to see for myself something of the surroundings I’d seen depicted in his images.

Cherryburn - the National Trust-run site

Fiona had found Bewick’s detailed illustrations among the most useful of sources in preparation for her year of living in the past, when she recreated the 18^th-century lifestyle of one of her ancestors just north of the Border. She documented the results in The Garden Cottage Diaries: My Year in the Eighteenth Century – a book that has particular fascination for family-history buffs as well as historians, partly because of its plethora of domestic details.

Carrying firewood bundle - Thomas Bewick engraving

The cottage and museum at Cherryburn is now run by the National Trust: as well as an exhibition of Bewick’s life and work, including several of his tiny engraved boxwood blocks, there are occasional demonstrations of printing on the equipment in his workshop. It’s well worth a visit (and to learn more about Bewick, I recommend Jenny Uglow’s biography – 2006, Faber; review here – which is a pleasure to read and includes some delightful prints). The society’s members, well-versed in 18^th-century scenes, were the most knowledgeable audience yet to hear about Fiona’s project, judging by the conversation and questions.

Fiona Houston at Cherryburn, with Tyne Valley view

Cherryburn is situated in a beautiful, rolling part of Northumberland along the Tyne Valley. It would scarcely be possible to have visited on a lovelier spring day, with all the fresh greens of the new leaves clothing the hillsides, set off by blossoms and the hawthorn, with bluebells in the garden (which now even includes a croquet lawn!), and vistas of green to the north.

Making our way from this apparent rural idyll across the Pennines to our next destination, we passed evidence of the industry that once dominated the region: mining. At the top of Alston Moor rises an isolated 30m tower, the Stublick Chimney, once part of the lead-ore smelting equipment for nearby Langley Mill, designed in 1768 by John Smeaton, according to the sign standing near the tower.

From the construction it seems clear this is the same Smeaton who, about ten years earlier, had pioneered an influential technique of interlocking dovetailed stone to build an impregnable tower for the third Eddystone Lighthouse. If the high moor seemed bleak and inaccessible even on a benign day, and an almighty task for the workers bringing the shaped stones together to build the tower, construction there would at least have been easier than out at sea, it’s safe to assume. Looking up some local history later, though, I discovered (via the North Pennines Heritage Trust) that:

When the chimney was half finished, the mason, Nicolas White of Catton, went on strike for an increase on his eighteen shillings (90p) weekly wage. For two years no work was done, then, on being granted a two shillings (10p) increase he completed the chimney.

Alston Moor, May 2011

Standing on the windswept, lonely moor, it’s hard not to sympathise with Mr White. But I found this interesting mostly because I hadn’t heard of such an early example of striking for better conditions. And sure enough, on a quick look at Wikipedia, this coincides with the first ever strike known to have been declared in England.

The use of the English word “strike” first appeared in 1768, when sailors, in support of demonstrations in London, “struck” or removed the topgallant sails of merchant ships at port, thus crippling the ships.

Fascinating!

The Garden Cottage Diaries: My Year in the Eighteenth Century

Remarkable Journeys

Although it may seem that most of the world’s cameras are in London today, there are many, too, in the American South — and not only to record the shocking and tragic aftermath of the most devastating tornado in recorded history. South of the tornado’s path, in Florida, Gabrielle Giffords will be celebrating a remarkable milestone in her recovery from being shot in the head in January. Just three months ago, it looked unlikely that she could survive the injury to her brain, yet today, walking and talking again, she will be attending the historic final launch of the space shuttle Endeavour, piloted by her husband, Mark Kelly. For Ms Giffords, and for anyone who has experienced brain trauma, this will be a huge achievement and a day to remember.
After the launch, the Arizona congresswoman will be returning to Houston to resume her rehabilitation. [NOTE APRIL 30: the launch was delayed yesterday due to a power failure.] Who knows how far her recovery might progress? Advances in our understanding of the brain have been made at an exponential rate in recent years, so that injuries that would have meant certain death not so long ago can now be successfully treated, restoring some, most or even all of the person’s physical and mental functions.

Another two stories about our ever-growing understanding of the human brain have made the news during the last two weeks. One of these concerns the potentially transformational development of brain-computer interfaces, or BCIs (also known as mind-machine interfaces, or MMI), which are becoming ever more sophisticated. Professor John Donoghue released updated details of his BrainGate device, a smart chip implanted in the brain that enables the recipient to control a mechanical object purely with the power of thought, via a computer. In this month’s demonstration, a wheelchair-bound woman moved a glass clasped by a robotic arm, positioning it accurately over a dot on a landing mat, all the while remaining completely motionless herself, achieving the action (from her perspective) simply by thinking about it. Professor Donoghue first tested earlier versions of his device on a young quadriplegic in 2004, and has been refining it ever since; similar research is underway in several other centres around the world.
From stroke victims and those who have suffered catastrophic accidents to patients with advanced motor neurone disease, the implications of such a device are truly enormous. Whether sudden or gradual and inexorable, the loss of independence through progressive diseases or trauma-induced paralysis is a cruel blow. The ability to control elements of the physical environment with the power of thought could be a lifeline for anyone trapped inside a body thus reduced, by whatever cause. Perhaps even more fundamental is the facility to communicate; it is widely attested as being the most frustrating loss of all when speech, gestures and even facial mobility become impossible. With the BCI, researchers have already demonstrated typing achieved by thoughts rather than physical motions. Perhaps it won’t be too long before computer-aided “talking” will be demonstrated via a similar interface from the brain.
If paralysis is a terrible affliction, crippling pain — and especially the prospect of years of chronic pain — is at least equally the stuff of nightmares. Pain relief is another holy grail of science, and for a long time it was believed that the answer would be found in the form of drug therapy. But pain-relief medication has a diminishing effect and the side-effects can come at too high a price. By chance, researchers at a psychology lab recently discovered that they could relieve the pain of arthritis by means of an elaborate optical illusion, as shown earlier this month at the University of Nottingham. Whilst testing equipment that appeared to show fingers being stretched (click here to see footage), arthritis sufferers using the equipment reported experiencing a soothing of their joint pain when they believed that they saw their swollen joints being stretched. In other words, if we can successfully fool the brain, it is, apparently, possible to take the pain away.

Pain relief experiment - Nottingham University

A related sort of “trick” treatment was accidentally pioneered during World War II in an improvised surgery treating wounded soldiers in Italy, as described in Michael Kerrigan’s Mind Over Matter, which was published this month:

Allied troops had been taking heavy casualties and supplies of morphine had been running low; eventually the moment came when they ran out altogether. The fighting didn’t cease, though, and neither did the flow of casualties. One GI was brought in badly wounded, his agony only too obvious for all to see. Necessity was the mother of invention: a nurse grabbed a syringe of saline solution and drove it into the body of the yelling, writhing man. Within moments, he had calmed himself: now, it seemed, he felt no pain. Beecher was even able to operate upon him successfully.
He hadn’t set out to conduct an experiment, but that was what he had ended up doing despite himself. And the results had been sensational. The belief that one was being given morphine might be every bit as anesthetizing as the morphine itself could be, Beecher realized. Reduced to the same subterfuge again in the weeks that followed, he had exactly the same success. Fascinated by what he had found, he pursued his researches back in Boston at the Massachusetts General Hospital when the war was over.

If only scientists had paid more attention to Beecher’s findings in the decades that followed. Could it be that pursuing the pharmaceutical route promised more profits? Or is that too cynical?

See a video of Michael Kerrigan discussing Mind Over Matter here.
And as to that other event today, the trees in the Abbey were the star attraction for me.

Mind Over Matter is available in an illustrated print edition, and for the Kindle on Amazon UK (currently part of the Kindle Easter promotion) and Amazon US.

Mind Over Matter