The Record

My mum, Jennifer Darvell, was diagnosed with stage 3 bowel cancer in 2012, and had a successful operation to remove a section of her bowel. However, the cancer had spread to her lungs as a secondary cancer, now becoming stage 4. Over the next four years Mum had four further operations on her lungs to remove cancerous nodules. Finally, the cancer also spread to her brain and she had CyberKnife treatment on the two lesions. Sadly one of lesions didn't respond and her health deteriorated. She peacefully passed away in August 2016 at the St, Marks Nursing Home in Maidenhead.

During those four years I published two fundraising books, Beating Bowel Cancer & Lives & Times to raise funds for the Beating Bowel Cancer charity, which has now come under the umbrella of Bowel Cancer UK. All my books, art, t-shirts and teddy bears are available on my www.rivers2cross.com website. Since 2012 the total fundraising has raised around £10000.

I'd been thinking about doing a third book for some time while Mum was in hospital during her final months, and decided it would be fitting to do a book dedicated to her memory to raise more funds for Bowel Cancer UK. Another important aspect of what these books do is helping to raise awareness about bowel cancer. This cannot be underestimated. Bowel cancer is the 2nd biggest cancer killer in the UK, and yet can be successfully treated in over 90% of cases if detected early. Too many are lost to this disease...

The new book is called The Record, and the idea behind it was for me to go and meet and photograph people and write up about the experience in anecdotal form. This is the way I did Lives & Times. The difference this time is that there is a constant theme running through it, as I will asked everyone I met to tell me about the first record they bought. The book features many famous people from sport, music, television, as well as many amazing people from the bowel cancer community.

Click here to see how you can buy the book.