Pennell House Concert

LITERATURE

The Geography Department Reads...

Mr Wingfield Digby recommends ‘The Power of One’ by Bryce Courtney which he first read and loved when he was about 13 or 14. It is a wonderful adventure of resilience and growing up and is set in South Africa in the war and during apartheid. It is pretty hard-hitting at times, but you can’t put it down.

Mr Longden loves non-fiction. The latest book he read was ‘The Power of Geography’ by Tim Marshall, a respected and credible foreign affairs correspondent and author. It is a sequel to ‘Prisoners of Geography’ which was a previous geography department recommended read. It seeks to illustrate how future issues and potential or probable conflicts are rooted in historic and present geopolitics. He would recommend it as, after reading it, far more of what people read, see or hear in the news will make sense to them. Crucially, they will likely be able to understand not just what is happening but have a more nuanced understanding of why. Following on from COP26, he also recommends ‘Climate Change: A very short introduction’ by Mark Maslin. It is a small book but provides a really good foundation understanding of climate change, so it is a good place to begin for anyone interested in the issue. His final recommendation is a general eye-opener called ‘Weapons of Math Destruction’ by Cathy O’Neil. It shines a light on big tech companies. It poses the questions of some of their practices and uses of big data and algorithm targeting. It questions whether these are actually good for individuals or society and is a thoughtprovoking, and hopefully eye-opening read. When paired with a knowledge of the Facebook—Cambridge Analytica scandal, it poses the question as to whether these algorithms are so powerful that, above and beyond marketing products to people, they can be used to selectively influence major things like voting outcomes in elections or referendums and therefore risk undermining the concept of democracy itself. Mr Lamb has just finished reading Sir Earnest Shackleton’s amazing diary “South” which charts the exploits of his team in the Antarctic from 1914 to their eventual rescue in 1917. This is an even more poignant read as the world has just been reunited with Shackleton’s ship The Endurance, sunk during that ill-fated expedition and only just now rediscovered on the sea bed of the Weddell Sea in almost pristine condition, some 107 years later.

The words in this book are Shackleton’s own, written in the style and tone of the time, where nothing was too onerous, everything was politely delivered and understated, when people did not show weakness and yet where the spirit of excitement and adventure was no less palatable either.

Picture this: you fall through the ice in your sleeping bag during the long Antarctic winter and are pulled soaking wet from the water by members of your team. There are no spare sleeping bags and you have minutes before your body freezes. No phone calls to medical aid, no lightweight sleeping bags and spare warm kit….. Out of nowhere, your leader then hands you his own duckdown sleeping bag, one of only a handful with the group and he takes your wet woollen sleeping bag away to sleep in… Now, that is leadership. Shackleton’s style and approach to leading his men comes through loud and clear in his own writings in this book: the pressure of responsibility, and the strength of character and the inner determination that he possesses. If you want a pulse-raising read then this is not the go-to book. If you want to read a bit of incredible history, a tale of derring-do written in the style of the time it was written, then this is the book to go to. And when you are a bit weary of reading, jump on your legs and walk up to St Andrews Prep School and view the house he lived in. It is only a stone’s throw away from the school – you can see the blue plaque on the wall! His ship is called ‘Endurance’, by the way – a perfectly selected name for the adventure that Shackleton and his merry band of explorers called home before it was crushed by the ice and sunk. Google it and check out the underwater footage. Now that is exciting!

You have just minutes before your body freezes