Geography is all around us

World Book Day provided the opportune moment to read extracts from a range of contemporary literature.

Third Form pupils studying ocean currents and global wind patterns were treated to an extract from Endurance, which recounts the story of Shackleton’s fateful Trans-Antarctica Expedition (1914- 1917). The boys heard how Shackleton and five comrades navigated 800 miles in an open-top boat, from Elephant Island to South Georgia, a remote island in the Southern Ocean. Meanwhile, Lower Sixth pupils studying intra-urban migration heard extracts from Darren McGarvey’s Poverty Safari. McGarvey (stage name Loki), is a social commentator, activist, and Glaswegian rapper who has made several appearances on national television. His book offers a no-holds-barred account of the impacts of gentrification on low-income, inner-city communities of Glasgow in the 1980s-90s.  

Finally, Upper Sixth Geographers learning about economic transition listened to a characteristically deadpan account from Bill Bryson’s Notes from a Small Island, in which he describes the evolution of Liverpool’s shipping industry, from Britain’s busiest port in the 1960s to it’s decline in the face of technological advances and increased globalisation. If you look closely, there really is geography all around us!  

Christopher Foyle, Head of Geography