A light read for movers, Monster Moves.

This could just be the perfect gift for anyone in the moving industry this year:  Monster Moves by Carlo Massarella.

It’s the book that accompanies the recent TV Series and contains stories that are simply unbelievable.  For those in the moving trade, moving house is straightforward enough, but imagine your reaction if your customer literally wanted you to move ‘the house’; or how about a church, a lighthouse or even an ancient monument?  It would certainly concentrate the mind.

The book not only explains what was done but also exactly how they did it.  It’s beautifully illustrated with step-by-step instructions on how to move a mansion or recover a sunken nuclear submarine.  And it you’ve ever wondered how to pack a Spitfire into a container, wonder no more. It’s all here.

It features, for example, slicing mansions in half with chain saws, hoisting church spires with helicopters and floating entire houses down stream on rafts at the mercy of wind and tide.  You’ll also see what happens when it all goes disastrously wrong. It’s very good stuff that will keep anyone, interested in moving or not, enthralled long past boxing day.

The book also comes with a CD showing two episodes of the TV show that was seen by a UK audience of 1.7 million.

The author, Carlo Massarelli, graduated from Imperial College in 1996 with an MSc in Science Communication and a desire to make complicated science captivating, informative and available to a non-scientific audience. He has produced and directed critically-acclaimed scientific and historical documentary series, including the Emmy-award winning DNA: The Human Race and while continuing to work on the Monster Moves series has also overseen the development of the spin-off concept Big, Bigger, Biggest and Last Shuttle: Our Journey.

Monster Moves is available from book shops and online from around £11.00.