Jo Stansall – författare

SHORTLISTED FOR THE EDWARD STANFORD TRAVEL BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD 2023* NOW A MAJOR DOCUMENTARY SERIES ON ALL 4 *‘This is a fabulous adventure – reckless, insanely ambitious and filled with sweat, tears and laughter ... irresistible reading.’ Joanna Lumley‘Alex Bescoby weaves travel, adventure, history and the contemporary together like no one else. His great gift is to take us on a journey through past and present.' Dan Snow_______________________________________________________________‘A journey that I don’t think could be made again today’. It was this comment by Sir David Attenborough on the fiftieth anniversary of the iconic First Overland expedition that became an irresistible challenge for filmmaker and adventurer Alex Bescoby.In 1955, Attenborough, then a young TV producer, was approached by six recent university graduates determined to drive the entire length of ‘Eurasia’, from London to Singapore. It was the unclimbed Everest of motoring – many had tried, none had succeeded. Sensing this time might be different, Attenborough gave the expedition enough film reel to cover their attempt. The 19,000-mile journey completed by Tim Slessor and the team captivated a nation emerging from postwar austerity. Tim’s book, The First Overland, soon became the bible of the overlanding religion. Inspired by the First Overland, Alex made contact with now eighty-six-year-old Tim and together they planned an epic recreation of the original trip, this time from Singapore to London. Their goal was to complete the legendary journey started more than sixty years ago in the original Land Rover. In awe of the unstoppable Tim, and haunted by his own grandfather’s declining health, Alex and his team soon find themselves battling rough roads, breakdowns and Oxford’s constantly leaky roof to discover a world changed for the better – and worse – since the first expedition.

* NOW A MAJOR DOCUMENTARY SERIES ON ALL 4 *‘This is a fabulous adventure – reckless, insanely ambitious and filled with sweat, tears and laughter ... irresistible reading.’ Joanna Lumley ‘Alex Bescoby weaves travel, adventure, history and the contemporary together like no one else. His great gift is to take us on a journey through past and present. By its end we have learned more about the world and ourselves.’ Dan Snow_______________________________________________________________‘A journey that I don’t think could be made again today’. It was this comment by Sir David Attenborough on the fiftieth anniversary of the iconic First Overland expedition that became an irresistible challenge for filmmaker and adventurer Alex Bescoby.In 1955, Attenborough, then a young TV producer, was approached by six recent university graduates determined to drive the entire length of ‘Eurasia’, from London to Singapore. It was the unclimbed Everest of motoring – many had tried, none had succeeded. Sensing this time might be different, Attenborough gave the expedition enough film reel to cover their attempt. The 19,000-mile journey completed by Tim Slessor and the team captivated a nation emerging from postwar austerity. Tim’s book, The First Overland, soon became the bible of the overlanding religion.Inspired by the First Overland, Alex made contact with now eighty-six-year-old Tim and together they planned an epic recreation of the original trip, this time from Singapore to London. Their goal was to complete the legendary journey started more than sixty years ago in the original ‘Oxford’ Land Rover.In awe of the unstoppable Tim, and haunted by his own grandfather’s declining health, Alex and his team soon find themselves battling rough roads, breakdowns and Oxford’s constantly leaky roof to discover a world changed for the better ­­– and worse – since the first expedition.

* NOW A MAJOR DOCUMENTARY SERIES ON ALL 4 *‘This is a fabulous adventure – reckless, insanely ambitious and filled with sweat, tears and laughter ... irresistible reading.’ Joanna Lumley ‘Alex Bescoby weaves travel, adventure, history and the contemporary together like no one else. His great gift is to take us on a journey through past and present. By its end we have learned more about the world and ourselves.’ Dan Snow_______________________________________________________________‘A journey that I don’t think could be made again today’. It was this comment by Sir David Attenborough on the fiftieth anniversary of the iconic First Overland expedition that became an irresistible challenge for filmmaker and adventurer Alex Bescoby.In 1955, Attenborough, then a young TV producer, was approached by six recent university graduates determined to drive the entire length of ‘Eurasia’, from London to Singapore. It was the unclimbed Everest of motoring – many had tried, none had succeeded. Sensing this time might be different, Attenborough gave the expedition enough film reel to cover their attempt. The 19,000-mile journey completed by Tim Slessor and the team captivated a nation emerging from postwar austerity. Tim’s book, The First Overland, soon became the bible of the overlanding religion.Inspired by the First Overland, Alex made contact with now eighty-six-year-old Tim and together they planned an epic recreation of the original trip, this time from Singapore to London. Their goal was to complete the legendary journey started more than sixty years ago in the original ‘Oxford’ Land Rover.In awe of the unstoppable Tim, and haunted by his own grandfather’s declining health, Alex and his team soon find themselves battling rough roads, breakdowns and Oxford’s constantly leaky roof to discover a world changed for the better ­­– and worse – since the first expedition.

From gravity to black holes, special relativity to global warming, this authoritative and entertaining book from bestselling author Marcus Chown breaks down complex science into manageable chunks, explaining the one thing you really need to know to get to grips with the subject.Rather than trying to bend your mind around all the vast and confounding details of things such as gravitational waves, electricity and black holes, wouldn’t it be easier to understand just one central concept from which everything else follows?If you’ve ever found yourself fascinated by the idea of quantum computing but feel a little overwhelmed by the mindblowing subject of quantum mechanics or concerned by climate change but haven’t been able to get to grips with the details of global warming, this book is for you. Let’s take atoms, for example – what on earth are they? Well, if you start to think of them less like things you can’t see with complex little nuclei and more like the alphabet of nature, which in different configurations can make a rose, a galaxy or a newborn baby, they might start to feel a little more understandable. Or gravitational waves – they sound poetic, but why are they creating so much excitement? Think of them as the voice of space, vibrations on the drumskin of space-time – before delving into all their complexities. In twenty-one short and engaging chapters, Chown explains the one thing you need to know to understand some of the most important scientific ideas of our time. Packed full of astounding facts, scientific history and the entertaining personalities at the heart of the most pivotal discoveries about the workings of our universe, this is an accessible guide to all the tricky stuff you’ve always wanted to understand more about.