Author Event - Lindsay McCrae Talk & Signing
My Penguin Year; Living With the Emperors – A Journey of Discovery
Venue: The Collection Auditorium
Ticket Prices: Standard: £7 Single including book:£23.50 Couple including book: £27
Date: Sunday 27 October
Time: 7pm (doors open at 6.30pm)
Stokes Café will provide a bar for pre-event drinks.
We are joined by the naturalist and film-maker who filmed the BBC Dynasties series, narrated by David Attenborough .He will be talking about his new book (and showing us images) which present an unprecedented portrait of Antarctica's most extraordinary residents, along with his personal experiences of a year spent in filming them. Lindsay has been filming wildlife professionally for over ten years.
On Sunday 11th November 2018 eight million people in Britain were enthralled by the BBC TV documentary Dynasties about emperor penguins, narrated by Sir David Attenborough, and the media loved it too - Simon Mayo On BBC Radio 2 called it ‘as close to art as television can get’.
The man who made that film was 29-year-old cameraman Lindsay McCrae who spent an extraordinary year in the Antarctic living alongside the most resilient creatures in nature: emperor penguins. Filming the entire lifecycle of these magnificent birds, Lindsay endured unimaginable weather conditions (including freezing winds in excess of 100kph), witnessed behaviour new to science and all the while living isolated on an Antarctic ice shelf for an entire winter that lasts 8 months. Who could also forget the intervention he and the crew took to save the penguins from death in the storm?
Lindsay’s passion for wildlife filming began at the age of fourteen when he wrote to Springwatch and encouraged them to come and film near his home in the Lake District – to his delight, they did! He took out a loan from his Mother to buy his first camera and has never looked back since his first internship with the film crew who ignited his interests. Despite this expedition being the culmination of a childhood dream – sacrifices were inevitable and for the first time he shares not only the harsh reality of spending hours in the freezing arctic outdoors – including a frost bitten nose and frightening journeys that were near impossible across the landscape – but also how the personal obstacles of being over 15,000km from home with no way back for a whole year, proved almost too much, including being absent for the birth of his first son.
My Penguin Year includes a beautiful eight section colour inset of some of the still images Lindsay took on the trip, but above all else, the extraordinary story of human endeavour that sits behind the camera.
Earlier this year Lindsay McCrae won a BAFTA for Dynasties: Emperor. He will be returning to Antarctica this November to continue filming emperors.