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Canongate will publish BBC Radio 6 presenter Mark Radcliffe’s book Crossroads, discussing pivotal tracks in music and the musicians who performed them.
Senior commissioning editor Hannah Knowles bought world rights from Caroline Chignell at PBJ Management. Publication is scheduled for 5th September 2019.
The synopsis reads: “Standing at the crossroads – the Mississippi crossroads of Robert Johnson and the devil’s infamous meeting – Mark Radcliffe found himself facing his own personal crunch point. Aged 60, he had just mourned the death of his father, only to be handed a diagnosis of mouth and throat cancer. This momentous time in his life, and being at the most famous junction in music history, led Radcliffe to think about the pivotal tracks in music and how the musicians who wrote and performed them – from Woody Guthrie to Gloria Gaynor, Kurt Cobain to Bob Marley – had reached the crossroads that led to such epoch-changing music.”
Canongate said of the book: “In this warm, intimate account of music and its power to transform our lives, Radcliffe takes a personal journey through these touchstones tracks, looking at the stories behind the records and his own experiences as he goes in search of these moments.”
Radcliffe said: “The inspiration for this book came at a momentous time in my life when I was forced to confront my own mortality shortly after standing at one of the key locations in the history of rock and roll. That personal crossroads moment led me to think about musical crossroads that changed the direction of popular music, and the personal and cultural shifts that triggered them.”
Knowles said: “Mark’s broadcasts have been the soundtrack to much of my life, and getting to work with someone with his great knowledge and depth of understanding of music is a true privilege.”
Radcliffe has been a broadcaster for the BBC for nearly 30 years, currently appearing as half of the “Radcliffe & Maconie Show” for BBC Radio 6 Music and on Radio 2 hosting the “Folk Show”. He has won six Gold Sony Awards plus Sony's Music Broadcaster of the Year 2009, and has recorded 10 albums with four bands. He has published two works of non-fiction, Thank You For the Days: a Boy’s Own Adventure in Radio and Beyond and Reelin’ in the Years (both published by (Simon & Schuster UK) and one work of fiction, Northern Sky (Hodder & Stoughton Ltd). He lives in Cheshire.